VIEWS  AND  KEVIEWS 


VIEWS 
AND    REVIEWS 

BY 

HENRY  JAMES 

NOW  FIRST  COLLECTED 


INTRODUCTION  BY 

LE  ROY  PHILLIPS 

COMPILER  OF 

'A  BIBLIOGRAPHY  OF  THE  WRITINGS 
OF  HENRY  JAMES  " 


BOSTON 

THE    BALL   PUBLISHING    COMPANY 
1908 


Copyright,  1908 
BY  THE  BALL  PUBLISHING  Co. 


INTRODUCTION 

Those  whose  palates  are  accustomed  to  the  subtle 
flavours  of  the  wines  of  the  Rhi/ne  and  Moselle  can 
smack  their  lips  and  name  the  vintage  at  the  first 
taste.  Likewise  any  one  fairly  familiar  with  the 
work  of  Mr.  James  during  his  forty  years  of  liter 
ary  activity  can,  after  the  reading  of  a  single  page 
taken  at  random,  judge  with  a  remarkable  accu 
racy  the  date  of  its  composition.  Yet  the  transi 
tion  has  not  been  abrupt  and  the  styles  of  writing 
which  the  author  has  adopted,  early,  middle  and 
late,  have  blended  in  such  a  way  that  he  has  been 
bringing  many  of  his  earlier  readers,  though  some 
have  fallen  by  the  wayside,  along  with  him  to  a 
genuine  appreciation  of  his  present  work. 

It  is  not  unnatural  but  disappointing  that  those 
of  the  present  generation  who  chance  to  meet  Mr. 
James  in  one  of  the  later  novels  are  not  as  likely 
to  seek  a  second  volume  as  those  who  read  Daisy 
Miller  some  thirty  years  ago  when  that  study  first 
appeared,  so  fresh  in  its  note  of  charm  and  pathos, 
in  the  now  almost  unfindable  brown  wrappers  of 

333904 


vi  INTRODUCTION 

Harper's  Half  Hour  Series,  for  they  may  forever 
miss  a  rare  enjoyment. 

In  the  critical  papers  which  make  up  the  con 
tents  of  this  book,  the  characteristics  of  the  au 
thor's  later  style  are  wholly  absent.  Without  the 
date  of  the  original  appearance  of  these  essays  in 
periodical  form  being  indicated,  the  chronological 
setting  of  this  work  is  apparent.  No  sentences 
with  marvelously  intricate  complications  of  con 
struction  and  with  expressions  involved  are  in  the 
author's  method  at  this  time,  while  for  clearness 
and  charm  these  views  and  reviews  are  admirable 
specimens,  showing  qualities  which  brought  Mr. 
James  his  early  readers  and  first  made  his  name 
an  essential  feature  of  the  announcements  of  pub 
lishers  of  the  more  discriminating  periodicals  forty 
years  ago. 

The  earliest  authenticated  magazine  article  by 
Mr.  James  —  printed  when  he  was  twenty-one  — 
is  a  critical  notice  of  Nassau  W.  Senior's  Essays 
on  Fiction  in  The  North  American  Review  for  Oc 
tober,  1864-  From  this  time  until  the  appearance 
of  his  first  volume  —  A  Passionate  Pilgrim  and 
Other  Tales,  Boston:  1875  —  as  many  as  one  hun 
dred  and  twenty-five  serious  literary  notices  con 
tributed  to  periodicals  can  be  traced  to  him. 

'During  this  period  it  must  also  be  remembered 
that  Mr.  James  was  equally  employed  in  writing 
short  stories,  art  criticism  and  notes  of  travel,  both 


INTRODUCTION  mi 

at  home  and  abroad,  and  that  these  were  also  dis 
tinctive  features  of  the  widely  scattered  journals 
in  which  they  appeared. 

In  The  North  American  Review,  The  Atlantic 
Monthly,  The  Galaxy,  Lippincott's  Magazine,  The 
New  York  Tribune,  The  Independent  and  some 
other  periodicals,  the  authorship  of  such  work  was 
attributed  to  Mr.  James  on  the  publication  of  the 
articles  or  in  regularly  issued  indexes. 

The  articles  in  The  Nation  are  seldom  signed, 
and  there  is  no  published  index  showing  the  con 
tributors  to  its  files.  In  preparing  a  recent l Bibli 
ography  of  the  writings  of  Henry  James  I  had 
access  to  a  record  which  the  late  Wendell  Phillips 
Garrison,  who  was  Mr.  GodJcin's  associate  from  the 
founding  of  the  paper  and  after  1881  editor  m 
charge  until  June  £8,  1906,  had  carefully  kept  of 
every  author's  work  which  his  paper  had  published 
since  its  first  issue.  The  amount  of  matter  which 
Mr.  James  had  provided,  and  the  variety  of  inter 
ests  concerning  which  he  wrote,  made  an  amazing 
array  of  notes.  It  is  from  the  early  issues  of  The 
Nation  that  much  of  the  contents  of  this  volume  is 
reprinted.  Of  Mr.  James's  contributions  to  periodi 
cals  those  to  this  paper  were  perhaps  the  most 
notable  as  well  as  the  most  frequent.  He  was 


*rA  Bibliography  of  the  Writings  of  Henry  James.    Bos 
ton  and  New  York:   Houghton,  Miffiin  and  Company,  1906. 


mii  INTRODUCTION 

represented  in  its  first  number  —  July  6,  1865  — 
by  some  critical  notes  on  Henry  W.  Kingsley's 
novel,  "  The  Hillyars  and  the  Bartons :  A  Story 
of  Two  Families,"  under  the  title,  "The  Noble 
School  of  Fiction,"  and  the  name  "  Henry  James  " 
appears  in  the  publisher's  announced  list  of  con 
tributors  to  the  early  volumes.  Many  of  these  pa 
pers  which  first  appeared  in  The  Nation  have  been 
reprinted,  but  few  readers  at  this  distance  can 
realize  how  much  the  esteem  in  which  that  journal 
was  immediately  held  under  the  editorial  supervision 
of  Mr.  Godkin  was  due  to  perhaps  its  youngest 
regular  contributor. 

Volumes  of  the  collected  critical  papers  have 
already  appeared,  —  French  Poets  and  Novelists, 
London:  1878,  and  Partial  Portraits,  London: 
1888,  are  the  more  notable,  —  but  by  far  the 
greater  part  of  these  contemporary  Essays  on  the 
literature  of  the  late  sixties  and  the  seventies  are 
now  almost  lost  in  the  files  of  old  or  ext'mct  periodi 
cals. 

We  are  accustomed  these  later  years  to  think  of 
Mr.  James  as  novelist  rather  than  literary  essayist 
and  he  has  been  cited  by  a  recent  writer  as  an 
author  of  fiction  who  becomes  a  critic  on  occasion 
and,  he  also  adds,  that  his  analytical  system  of 
novel  writing  excellently  fits  him  for  the  office  of 
critic;  but,  on  the  contrary,  the  papers  in  this  vol 
ume  seem  to  show  that  his  early  self-training  as  a 


INTRODUCTION  ix 

critic  has  been  the  preparation  for  the  creation  of 
his  characters  in  fiction. 

The  true  lover  of  Mr.  James's  work  feels  the 
same  delightful  sense  of  intimate  discovery  in 
touching  these  early  papers  that  an  artist  does 
in  finding  a  portfolio  of  early  sketches  by  a  beloved 
master  whose  developed  power  and  strength  is 
known  to  him.  There  is  the  recognition  of  the 
characteristic  touch  even  here  —  the  insight,  the 
thought  within  a  thought,  (more  lately  the  des 
pair  of  privileged  psychologic  athletes),  the  mys 
tery  of  seeing  —  not  what  is  apparent  to  the 
outward  eye  but  what  we  fancied  we  concealed  suc- 
cessfully  within  our  inmost  selves.  There  is  the 
extraordinary  sense  of  his  having  put  on  paper 
what  we  really  thought  —  what  we  now  think  — 
that  gives  us  more  faith  than  ever  in  our  artist 
who  is  expression  for  us  who  feel,  but  who  are  yet 
dumb. 

LE    ROY    PHILLIPS. 

Boston,  April  10,  1908. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 
THE  NOVELS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT 1 

ON  A  DRAMA  OF  ROBERT  BROWNING 41 

SWINBURNE'S   ESSAYS 51 

THE  POETRY  OF  WILLIAM  MORRIS 

I.    THE  LIFE  AND  DEATH  OF  JASON     ...  63 

II.    THE  EARTHLY  PARADISE 71 

MATTHEW  ARNOLD'S  ESSAYS 83 

MR.  WALT  WHITMAN 101 

THE  POETRY  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT    . 

I.    THE  SPANISH  GYPSY 113 

II.     THE  LEGEND  OF  JUBAL 138 

THE  LIMITATIONS  OF  DICKENS 153—"   - 

TENNYSON'S   DRAMA 

I.    QUEEN   MARY 165 

II.    HAROLD 196 

CONTEMPORARY  NOTES  ON  WHISTLER  vs.  RUSKIN 

I.    THE  SUIT  FOR  LIBEL 207 

II.    MR.  WHISTLER'S  REJOINDER 211 

A  NOTE  ON  JOHN  BURROUGHS 217 

MR.  KIPLING'S   EARLY   STORIES 225 


THE  NOVELS  OF  GEOEGE  ELIOT 


Originally  published  in  The  Atlantic  Monthly,  Oc 
tober,  1866. 

This  essay  was  written  in  1866  before  Middlemarch 
or  Daniel  Deronda  had  appeared.  The  former  work 
was  published  in  1871-72  and  the  latter  book  in  1876. 
It  was  afterwards  discussed  at  length  by  Mr.  James  in 
"  Daniel  Deronda :  a  Conversation,"  originally  contrib 
uted  to  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  December,  1876,  and  re 
printed  in  1888  in  Partial  Portraits. 


VIEWS  AND    REVIEWS 

THE  NOVELS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT 

THE  critic's  first  duty  in  the  presence  of  an 
author's  collective  works  is  to  seek  out  some 
key  to  his  method,  some  utterance  of  his  literary 
convictions,  some  indication  of  his  ruling  theory. 
The  amount  of  labour  involved  in  an  inquiry  of 
this  kind  will  depend  very  much  upon  the  author. 
In  some  cases  the  critic  will  find  express  declara 
tions  ;  in  other  cases  he  will  have  to  content  himself 
with  conscientious  inductions.  In  a  writer  so  fond 
of  digressions  as  George  Eliot,  he  has  reason  to 
expect  that  broad  evidences  of  artistic  faith  will 
not  be  wanting.  He  finds  in  Adam  Bede  the  fol 
lowing  passage: — 

1  'Paint  us  an  angel  if  you  can,  with  a  floating 
violet  robe  and  a  face  paled  by  the  celestial  light; 
paint  us  yet  oftener  a  Madonna,  turning  her  mild 
face  upward,  and  opening  her  arms  to  welcome  the 
divine  glory ;  but  do  not  impose  on  us  any  esthetic 
rules  which  shall  banish  from  the  region  of  art 
those  old  women  scraping  carrots  with  their  work- 
worn  hands, — those  heavy  clowns  taking  holiday 

1 


-AND  REVIEWS 

in  a  dingy  pot-house, — those  rounded  backs  and 
stupid  weather-beaten  faces  that  have  bent  over  the 
spade  and  done  the  rough  work  of  the  world, — 
those  homes  with  their  tin  cans,  their  brown 
pitchers,  their  rough  curs,  and  their  clusters  of 
onions.  In  this  world  there  are  so  many  of  these 
common,  coarse  people,  who  have  no  picturesque, 
sentimental  wretchedness.  It  is  so  needful  we 
should  remember  their  existence,  else  we  may  hap 
pen  to  leave  them  quite  out  of  our  religion  and  phi 
losophy,  and  frame  lofty  theories  which  only  fit 
a  world  of  extremes.  .  .  . 

' f  There  are  few  prophets  in  the  world, — few  sub 
limely  beautiful  women, — few  heroes.  I  can't 
afford  to  give  all  my  love  and  reverence  to  such 
rarities;  I  want  a  great  deal  of  those  feelings  for 
my  every-day  fellowmen,  especially  for  the  few 
in  the  foreground  of  the  great  multitude,  whose 
faces  I  know,  whose  hands  I  touch,  for  whom  I 
have  to  make  way  with  kindly  courtesy.  .  .  . 

"I  herewith  discharge  my  conscience/'  our  au 
thor  continues,  "and  declare  that  I  have  had  quite 
enthusiastic  movements  of  admiration  toward  old 
gentlemen  who  spoke  the  worst  English,  who  were 
occasionally  fretful  in  their  temper,  and  who  had 
never  moved  in  a  higher  sphere  of  influence  than 
that  of  parish  overseer;  and  that  the  way  in  which 
I  have  come  to  the  conclusion  that  human  nature 
is  loveable — the  way  I  have  learnt  something  of 


THE  NOVELS.  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT    3 

its  deep  pathos,  its  sublime  mysteries — has  been 
by  living  a  great  deal  among  people  more  or  less 
commonplace  and  vulgar,  of  whom  you  would  per 
haps  hear  nothing  very  surprising  if  you  were  to 
inquire  about  them  in  the  neighbourhoods  where 
they  dwelt/' 

But  even  in  the  absence  of  any  such  avowed 
predilections  as  these,  a  brief  glance  over  the  prin 
cipal  figures  of  her  different  works  would  assure 
us  that  our  author 's  sympathies  are  with  common 
people.  Silas,  Marner  is  a  linen-weaver,  Adam 
Bede  is  a  carpenter,  Maggie  Tulliver  is  a  miller's 
daughter,  Felix  Holt  is  a  watchmaker,  Dinah  Mor 
ris  works  in  a  factory,  and  Hetty  Sorrel  is  a  dairy 
maid.  Esther  Lyon,  indeed,  is  a  daily  governess; 
but  Tito  Melema  alone  is  a  scholar.  In  the  Scenes 
of  Clerical  Life,  the  author  is  constantly  slipping 
down  from  the  clergymen,  her  heroes,  to  the  most 
ignorant  and  obscure  of  their  parishioners.  Even 
in  Romola  she  consecrates  page  after  page  to  the 
conversation  of  the  Florentine  populace.  She  is  as 
unmistakably  a  painter  of  bourgeois  life  as  Thack 
eray  was  a  painter  of  the  life  of  drawing-rooms. 

Her  opportunities  for  the  study  of  the  manners 
of  the  solid  lower  classes  have  evidently  been  very 
great.  We  have  her  word  for  it  that  she  has  lived 
much  among  the  farmers,  mechanics,  and  small 
traders  of  that  central  region  of  England  which 
she  has  made  known  to  us  under  -the  name  of  Loam- 


4  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

shire.  The  conditions  of  the  popular  life  in  this 
district  in  that  already  distant  period  to  which 
she  refers  the  action  of  most  of  her  stories — the 
end  of  the  last  century  and  the  beginning  of  the 
present — were  so  different  from  any  that  have  been 
seen  in  America,  that  an  American,  in  treating 
of  her  books,  must  be  satisfied  not  to  touch  upon 
the  question  of  their  accuracy  and  fidelity  as  pic 
tures  of  manners  and  customs.  He  can  only  say 
that  they  bear  strong  internal  evidence  of  truth 
fulness. 

If  he  is  a  great  admirer  of  George  Eliot,  he 
will  indeed  be  tempted  to  affirm  that  they  must 
be  true.  They  offer  a  completeness,  a  rich  density 
of  detail,  which  could  be  the  fruit  only  of  a  long 
term  of  conscious  contact, — such  as  would  make 
it  much  more  difficult  for  the  author  to  fall  into 
the  perversion  and  suppression  of  facts,  than  to 
set  them  down  literally.  It  is  very  probable  that 
her  colours  are  a  little  too  bright,  and  her  shadows 
of  too  mild  a  gray,  that  the  sky  of  her  landscapes 
is  too  sunny,  and  their  atmosphere  too  redolent  of 
peace  and  abundance.  Local  affection  may  be  ac- 
*  countable  for  half  of  this  excess  of  brilliancy ;  the 
./  author's  native  optimism  is  accountable  for  the 

other  half. 

I  do  not  remember,  in  all  her  novels,  an  in 
stance  of  gross  misery  of  any  kind  not  directly 
caused  by  the  folly  of  the  sufferer.  There  are  no 


THE  NOVELS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT    5 

pictures  of  vice  or  poverty  or  squalor.  There  are 
no  rags,  no  gin,  no  brutal  passions.  That  average 
humanity  which  she  favours  is  very  borne  in  in 
tellect,  but  very  genial  in  heart,  as  a  glance  at 
its  representatives  in  her  pages  will  convince  us. 
In  Adam  Bede,  there  is  Mr.  Irwine,  the  vicar, 
with  avowedly  no  qualification  for  his  profession, 
placidly  playing  chess  with  his  mother,  stroking  his 
dogs,  and  dipping  into  Greek  tragedies;  there  is 
the  excellent  Martin  Poyser  at  the  Farm,  good- 
natured  and  rubicund ;  there  is  his  wife,  somewhat 
too  sharply  voluble,  but  only  in  behalf  of  cleanli 
ness  and  honesty  and  order;  there  is  Captain  Don- 
nithorne  at  the  Hall,  who  does  a  poor  girl  a  mortal 
wrong,  but  who  is,  after  all,  such  a  nice,  good- 
looking  fellow ;  there  are  Adam  and  Seth  Bede,  the 
carpenter's  sons,  the  strongest,  purest,  most  dis 
creet  of  young  rustics.  The  same  broad  felicity 
prevails  in  The  Mill  on  the  Floss.  Mr.  Tulliver, 
indeed,  fails  in  business ;  but  his  failure  only  serves 
as  an  offset  to  the  general  integrity  and  pros 
perity.  His  son  is  obstinate  and  wilful;  but  it  is 
all  on  the  side  of  virtue.  His  daughter  is  some 
what  sentimental  and  erratic ;  but  she  is  more  con 
scientious  yet. 

Conscience,  in  the  classes  from  which  George 
Eliot  recruits  her  figures,  is  a  universal  gift.  De 
cency  and  plenty  and  good-humour  follow  con 
tentedly  in  its  train.  The  word  which  sums  up 


6  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

the  common  traits  of  our  author's  various  groups 
is  the  word  respectable.  Adam  Bede  is  pre-emi 
nently  a  respectable  young  man ;  so  is  Arthur  Don- 
nithorne ;  so,  although  he  will  persist  in  going  with 
out  a  cravat,  is  Felix  Holt.  So,  with  perhaps  the 
exception  of  Maggie  Tulliver  and  Stephen  Guest, 
is  every  important  character  to  be  found  .in  our 
author's  writings.  They  all  share  this  fundamen- 
\/  tal  trait, — that  in  each  of  them  passion  proves 
itself  feebler  than  conscience. 

The  first  work  which  made  the  name  of  George 
Eliot  generally  known,  contains,  to  my  perception, 
only  a  small  number  of  the  germs  of  her  future 
power.  From  the  Scenes  of  Clerical  Life  to  Adam 
Bede  she  made  not  so  much  a  step  as  a  leap.  Of 
the  three  tales  contained  in  the  former  work,  I 
think  the  first  is  much  the  best.  It  is  short, 
broadly  descriptive,  humourous,  and  exceedingly 
pathetic.  "The  Sad  Fortunes  of  the  Eeverend 
Amos  Barton"  are  fortunes  which  clever  story 
tellers  with  a  turn  for  pathos,  from  Oliver  Gold 
smith  downward,  have  found  of  very  good  account, 
— the  fortunes  of  a  hapless  clergyman  of  the 
Church  of  England  in  daily  contention  with  the 
problem  how  upon  eighty  pounds  a  year  to  support 
a  wife  and  six  children  in  all  due  ecclesiastical  gen 
tility. 

"Mr.  Gilfil's  Love-Story,"  the  second  of  the 
tales  in  question,  I  cannot  hesitate  to  pronounce 


THE  NOVELS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT   7 

a  failure.  George  Eliot's  pictures  of  drawing- 
room  life  are  only  interesting  when  they  are  linked 
or  related  to  scenes  in  the  tavern  parlour,  the  dairy, 
and  the  cottage.  Mr.  GilnTs  love-story  is  enacted 
entirely  in  the  drawing-room,  and  in  consequence 
it  is  singularly  deficient  in  force  and  reality.  Not 
that  it  is  vulgar, — for  our  author 's  good  taste  never 
forsakes  her, — but  it  is  thin,  flat,  and  trivial.  But 
for  a  certain  family  likeness  in  the  use  of  lan 
guage  and  the  rhythm  of  the  style,  it  would  be 
hard  to  believe  that  these  pages  are  by  the  same 
hand  as  Silas  Marner. 

In  " Janet's  Repentance,"  the  last  and  longest 
of  the  three  clerical  stories,  we  return  to  middle 
life, — the  life  represented  by  the  Dodsons  in  The 
Mill  on  the  Floss.  The  subject  of  this  tale  might 
almost  be  qualified  by  the  French  epithet  scabreux. 
It  would  be  difficult  for  what  is  called  realism  to 
go  further  than  in  the  adoption  of  a  heroine  stained 
with  the  vice  of  intemperance.  The  theme  is  un 
pleasant  ;  the  author  chose  it  at  her  peril.  It  must 
be  added,  however,  that  Janet  Dempster  has  many 
provocations.  Married  to  a  brutal  drunkard,  she 
takes  refuge  in  drink  against  his  ill-usage;  and 
the  story  deals  less  with  her  lapse  into  disgrace  than 
with  her  redemption,  through  the  kind  offices  of 
the  Reverend  Edgar  Tryan, — by  virtue  of  which, 
indeed,  it  takes  its  place  in  the  clerical  series.  I 
cannot  help  thinking  that  the  stern  and  tragical 


8  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

character  of  the  subject  has  been  enfeebled  by  the 
over-diffuseness  of  the  narrative  and  the  excess  of 
local  touches.  The  abundance  of  the  author's  rec 
ollections  and  observations  of  village  life  clogs  the 
dramatic  movement,  over  which  she  has  as  yet  a 
comparatively  slight  control.  In  her  subsequent 
works  the  stouter  fabric  of  the  story  is  better  able 
to  support  this  heavy  drapery  of  humour  and  di 
gression. 

To  a  certain  extent,  I  think  jgfr*  Mavnf.v  holds 
a  higher  place  than  any  of  the  author's  works. 
It  is  more  nearly  a  masterpiece ;  it  has  more  of 
that  simple,  rounded,  consummate  aspect,  that 
absence  of  loose  ends  and  gaping  issues,  which 
marks  a  classical  work.  What  was  attempted  in 
it,  indeed,  was  within  more  immediate  reach  than 
the  heart-trials  of  Adam  Bede  and  Maggie  Tulliver. 
A  poor,  dull-witted,  disappointed  Methodist  cloth- 
weaver;  a  little  golden-haired  foundling  child;  a 
well-meaning,  irresolute  country  squire,  and  his 
patient,  childless  wife; — these,  with  a  chorus  of 
simple,  beer-loving  villagers,  make  up  the  dramatis 
personae.  More  than  any  of  its  brother-works, 
Silg^Mcumer,  I  think,  leaves  upon  the  mindt  a  deep 
impression  of  the  grossly  material  life  of  agri 
cultural  England  in  the  last  days  of  the  old  regime, 
— the  days  of  full-orbed  Toryism,  of  Trafalgar 
and  of  Waterloo,  when  the  invasive  spirit  of 


THE  NOVELS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT    9 

French  domination  threw  England  back  upon  a 
sense  of  her  own  insular  solidity,  and  made  her 
for  the  time  doubly,  brutally,  morbidly  English. 
Perhaps  the  best  pages  in  the  work  are  the  first 
thirty,  telling  the  story  of  poor  Marner's  disap 
pointments  in  friendship  and  in  love,  his  unmerited 
disgrace,  and  his  long,  lonely  twilight-life  at  Rave- 
loe,  with  the  sole  companionship  of  his  loom,  in 
which  his  muscles  moved  "with  such  even  repeti 
tion,  that  their  pause  seemed  almost  as  much  a 
constraint  as  the  holding  of  his  breath. ' ' 

Here,  as  in  all  George  Eliot's  books,  there  is 
a  middle  life  and  a  low  life;  and  here,  as  usual, 
I  prefer  the  low  lifey^n  Silas  Marngr,  in  my  opin 
ion,  she  has  come  neares^  the  mildly,  rich  tints  of 
brown  and  gray,  the  mellow  lights  and  the  un- 
dreadful  corner-shadows  of  the  Dutch  masters 
whom  she  emulates.  One  of  the  chapters  contains 
a  scene  in  a  pot-house,  which  frequent  reference 
has  made  famous.  Never  was  a  group  of  honest, 
garrulous  village  simpletons  more  kindly  and  hu 
manely  handled./After  a  long  and  somewhat 
chilling  silence,  emid  the  pipes  and  beer,  the  land 
lord  opens  the  conversation  "by  saying  in  a  doubt 
ful  tone  to  his  cousin  the  butcher: — 

"  'Some  folks  'ud  say  that  was  a  fine  beast  you 
druv  in  yesterday,  Bob?' 

"The  butcher,  a  jolly,  smiling,  red-haired  man, 


10  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

was  not  disposed  to  answer  rashly.  He  gave  a 
few  puffs  before  he  spat,  and  replied,  'And  they 
wouldn  't  be  fur  wrong,  John. ' 

"  After  this  feeble,  delusive  thaw,  silence  set  in 
as  severely  as  before. 

"  'Was  it  a  red  Durham?'  said  the  farrier,  tak 
ing  up  the  thread  of  discourse  after  the  lapse  of 
a  few  minutes. 

"The  farrier  looked  at  the  landlord,  and  the 
landlord  looked  at  the  butcher,  as  the  person  who 
must  take  the  responsibility  of  answering. 

"  'Bed  it  was/  said  the  butcher,  in  his  good- 
humoured  husky  treble, — 'and  a  Durham  it  was/ 

"  'Then  you  needn't  tell  me  who  you  bought  it 
of/  said  the  farrier,  looking  round  with  some 
triumph;  'I  know  who  it  is  has  got  the  red  Dur- 
hams  o'  this  country-side.  And  she'd  a  white  star 
on  her  brow,  I  '11  bet  a  penny  ? ' 

"  'Well;  yes — she  might/  said  the  butcher, 
slowly,  considering  that  he  was  giving  a  decided 
affirmation.  'I  don't  say  contrairy.' 

"  '  I  knew  that  very  well, '  said  the  farrier,  throw 
ing  himself  back  defiantly;  'if  I  don't  know  Mr. 
Lammeter's  cows,  I  should  like  to  know  who  does, 
—that's  all.  And  as  for  the  cow  you  bought,  bar 
gain  or  no  bargain,  I've  been  at  the  drenching  of 
her, — contradick  me  who  will. ' 

"The  farrier  looked  fierce,  and  the  mild 
butcher's  conversational  spirit  was  roused  a  little. 


THE  NOVELS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT      11 

"  'I'm  not  for  contradicking  no  man,'  he  said; 
'I'm  for  peace  and  quietness.  Some  are  for  cut 
ting  long  ribs.  I'm  for  cutting  'em  short  myself; 
but  /  don't  quarrel  with  'em.  All  I  say  is,  it's  a 
lovely  carkiss, — and  anybody  as  was  reasonable, 
it'ud  bring  tears  into  their  eyes  to  look  at  it.' 

"  'Well,  it's  the  cow  as  I  drenched,  whatever  it 
is,'  pursued  the  farrier,  angrily;  'and  it  was  Mr. 
Lammeter's  cow,  else  you  told  a  lie  when  you  said 
it  was  a  red  Durham.' 

"  'I  tell  no  lies,'  said  the  butcher,  with  the  same 
mild  huskiness  as  before;  'and  I  contradick  none, 
— not  if  a  man  was  to  -swear  himself  black ;  he 's 
no  meat  of  mine,  ribr  none  of  my  bargains.  All  I 
say  is,  it's  a  lovely  carkiss.  And  what  I  say  I'll 
stick  to ;  but  IJfl  quarrel  wi '  no  man. ' 

"  'No,'  said  the  farrier,  with  bitter  sarcasm, 
looking  al^the  company  generally;  'and  p'rhaps 
you  didnjt  say  the  cow  was  a  red  Durham;  and 
p'rha^you  didn't  say  she'd  got  a  star  on  her 
brow,— stick  to  that,  now  you  are  at  it.'  3 

Matters  having  come  to  this  point,  the  landlord 
irrterferes  ex  officio  to  preserve  order.  The  Lam- 
meter  family  having  come  up,  he  discreetly  invites 
Mr.  Macey,  the  parish  clerk  and  tailor,  to  favour 
the  company  with  his  recollections  on  the  subject. 
Mr.  Macey,  however,  "smiled  pityingly  in  answer 
to  the  landlord's  appeal,  and  said:  'Ay,  ay;  I 
know,  I  know :  but  I  let  other  folks  talk.  I  've  laid 


12  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

by  now,  and  gev  up  to  the  young  uns.  Ask  them 
as  have  been  to  school  at  Tarley:  they've  learn 't 
pernouncing;  that's  came  up  since  my  day.'  ' 

Mr.  Macey  is  nevertheless  persuaded  to  dribble 
out  his  narrative;  proceeding  by  instalments,  and 
questioned  from  point  to  point,  in  a  kind  of  So- 
cratic  manner,  by  the  landlord.  He  at  last  arrives 
at  Mr.  Lammeter's  marriage,  and  how  the  clergy- 
man,  when  he  came  to  put  the  questions,  inad 
vertently  transposed  the  position  of  the  two  essen 
tial  names,  and  asked,  ''Wilt  thou  have  this  man 
to  be  thy  wedded  wife?"  etc. 

"  'But  the  partic 'larest  thing  of  all/  pursues 
Mr.  Macey,  'is,  as  nobody  took  any  notice  on  it 
but  me,  and  they  answered  straight  off  "Yes," 
like  as  if  it  had  been  me  saying  "Amen"  i'  the 
right  place,  without  listening  to  what  went  be 
fore.' 

' '  '  But  you  knew  what  was  going  on  well  enough, 
didn't  you,  Mr.  Macey?  You  were  live  enough, 
eh?'  said  the  butcher. 

"  'Yes,  bless  you!'  said  Mr.  Macey,  pausing, 
and  smiling  in  pity  at  the  impatience  of  his, 
hearer's  imagination, — 'why,  I  was  all  of  a  trem 
ble;  it  was  as  if  I'd  been  a  coat  pulled  by  two 
tails,  like ;  for  I  couldn't  stop  the  parson,  I  couldn't 
take  upon  me  to  do  that;  and  yet  I  said  to  my 
self,  I  says,  "Suppose  they  shouldn't  be  fast  mar 
ried,  ' '  'cause  the  words  are  contrairy,  and  my  head 


THE  NOVELS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT   13 

went  working  like  a  mill,  for  I  was  always  uncom 
mon  for  turning  things  over  and  seeing  all  round 
'em;  and  I  says  to  myself,  "Is't  the  meaning  or 
the  words  as  makes  folks  fast  i'  wedlock?"  For 
the  parson  meant  right,  and  the  bride  and  bride 
groom  meant  right.  But  then,  when  I  came  to 
think  on  it,  meaning  goes  but  a  little  way  i'  most 
things,  for  you  may  mean  to  stick  things  together 
and  your  glue  may  be  bad,  and  then  where  are 
you?'  " 

Mr.  Macey's  doubts,  however,  are  set  at  rest  by 
the  parson  after  the  service,  who  assures  him  that 
what  does  the  business  is  neither  the  meaning  nor 
the  words,  but  the  register.  Mr.  Macey  then  ar 
rives  at  the  chapter — or  rather  is  gently  inducted 
thereunto  by  his  hearers — of  the  ghosts  who  fre 
quent  certain  of  the  Lammeter  stables.  But 
ghosts  threatening  to  prove  as  pregnant  a  theme 
of  contention  as  Durham  cows,  the  landlord  again 
meditates:  "  ' There's  folks  i'  my  opinion,  they 
can't  see  ghos'es,  not  if  they  stood  as  plain  as 
a  pikestaff  before  'em.  And  there's  reason  i'  that. 
For  there's  my  wife,  now,  can't  smell,  not  if 
she'd  the  strongest  o'  cheese  under  her  nose.  I 
never  seed  a  ghost  myself,  but  then  I  says  to  my 
self,  "Very  like  I  haven't  the  smell  for  'em."  I 
mean,  putting  a  ghost  for  a  smell  or  else  contrairi- 
ways.  And  so  I'm  for  holding  with  both  sides. 
.  .  .  For  the  smell's  what  I  go  by.'  " 


14  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

The  best  drawn  of  the  village  worthies  in  Silas 
Marner  are  j>Ir.  Macey,  of  the  scene  just  quoted, 
and  good  Dolly  Winthrop,  Marner 's  kindly  pa 
troness.  I  have  room  for  only  one  more  specimen 
of  Mr.  Macey.  He  is  looking  on  at  a  New  Year's 
dance  at  Squire  Cass's,  beside  Ben  Winthrop, 
Dolly's  husband. 

"  'The  Squire's  pretty  springy,  considering  his 
weight,'  said  Mr.  Macey,  'and  he  stamps  uncom 
mon  well.  But  Mr.  Lammeter  beats  'em  all  for 
shapes;  you  see  he  holds  his  head  like  a  sodger, 
and  he  isn't  so  cushiony  as  most  o'  the  oldish 
gentlefolks, — they  run  fat  in  girieral ; — and  he's 
got  a  fine  leg.  The  parson's  nimble  enough,  but 
he  hasn't  got  much  of  a  leg:  it  is  a  bit  too  thick 
downward,  and  his  knees  might  be  a  bit  nearer 
without  damage;  but  he  might  do  worse,  he  might 
do  worse.  Though  he  hasn't  that  grand  way  o' 
waving  his  hand  as  the  Squire  has.' 

"  'Talk  o'  nimbleness,  look  at  Mrs.  Osgood,'  said 
Ben  Winthrop.  .  .  .  'She's  the  finest  made 
woman  as  is,  let  the  next  be  where  she  will.' 

"  'I  don't  heed  how  the  women  are  made,'  said 
Mr.  Macey,  with  some  contempt.  'They  wear  nay- 
ther  coat  nor  breeches ;  you  can 't  make  much  out  o ' 
their  shapes!'  ! 

Mrs.  Winthrop,  the  wheelwright's  wife  who,  out 
of  the  fullness  of  her  charity,  comes  to  comfort 
Silas  in  the  season  of  his  distress,  is  in  her  way  one 


THE  NOVELS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT      15 

of  the  most  truthfully  sketched  of  the  author's 
figures.  "She  was  in  all  respects  a  woman  of 
scrupulous  conscience,  so  eager  for  duties  that  life 
seemed  to  offer  them  too  scantily  unless  she  rose 
at  half  past  four,  though  this  threw  a  scarcity  of 
work  over  the  more  advanced  hours  of  the  morn 
ing,  which  it  was  a  constant  problem  for  her  to 
remove.  .  .  .  She  was  a  very  mild,  patient 
woman,  whose  nature  it  was  to  seek  out  all  the 
sadder  and  more  serious  elements  of  life  and  pas 
ture  her  mind  upon  them."  She  stamps  I.  H.  S. 
on  her  cakes  and  loaves  without  knowing  what  the 
letters  mean,  or  indeed  without  knowing  that  they 
are  letters,  being  very  much  surprised  that  Mar- 
ner  can  "read  'em  off/' — chiefly  because  they  are 
on  the  pulpit  cloth  at  church.  She  touches  upon 
religious  themes  in  a  manner  to  make  the  super 
ficial  reader  apprehend  that  she  cultivates  some 
polytheistic  form  of  faith, — extremes  meet.  She 
urges  Marner  to  go  to  church,  and  describes  the 
satisfaction  which  she  herself  derives  from  the  per 
formance  of  her  religious  duties. 

"If  you've  niver  had  no  church,  there  's  no 
telling  what  good  it'll  do  you.  For  I  feel  as  set 
up  and  comfortable  as  niver  was,  when  I've  been 
and  heard  the  prayers  and  the  singing  to  the  praise 
and  glory  o'  God,  as  Mr.  Macey  gives  out, — and 
Mr.  Crackenthorp  saying  good  words  and  more 
partic'lar  on  Sacramen'  day ;  and  if  a  bit  o'  trouble 


16  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

comes,  I  feel  as  I  can  put  up  wi'  it,  for  I've  looked 
for  help  i'  the  right  quarter,  and  giv  myself  up 
to  Them  as  we  must  all  give  ourselves  up  to  at 
the  last :  and  if  we  've  done  our  part,  it  isn  't  to  be 
believed  as  Them  as  are  above  us  'ud  be  worse  nor 
we  are,  and  come  short  o'  Theirn." 

"The  plural  pronoun,"  says  the  author,  "was 
no  heresy  of  Dolly's,  but  only  her  way  of  avoiding 
a  presumptuous  familiarity. ' '  I  imagine  that  there 
is  in  no  other  English  novel  a  figure  so  simple  in 
its  elements  as  this  of  Dolly  Winthrop,  which  is 
so  real  without  being  contemptible,  and  so  quaint 
without  being  ridiculous. 

In  all  those  of  our  author's  books  which  have 
borne  the  name  of  the  hero  or  heroine, — Adam 
Bede,  Silas  Marner,  Romola,  and  Felix  Holt, — the 
person  so  put  forward  has  really  played  a  subor 
dinate  part.  The  author  may  have  set  out  with 
the  intention  of  maintaining  him  supreme;  but 
her  material  has  become  rebellious  in  her  hands, 
and  the  technical  hero  has  been  eclipsed  by  the 
real  one.  Tito  is  the  leading  figure  in  Romola. 
The  story  deals  predominantly,  not  with  Romola 
as  affected  by  Tito's  faults,  but  with  Tito's  faults 
as  affecting  first  himself,  and  incidentally  his  wife. 
Godfrey  Cass,  with  his  lifelong  secret,  is  by  right 
le  hero  of  Silas  Marner.  Felix  Holt,  in  the  work 
his  name,  is  little  more  than  an  oc- 


THE  NOVELS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT      17 

casional  apparition;  and  indeed  the  novel  has  no 
hero,  but  only  a  heroine. 

The  same  remark  applies  to  Adam  Bede,  as  the 
work  stands.  The  central  figure  of  the  book,  by 
virtue  of  her  great  misfortune,  is  Hetty  Sorrel. 
In  the  presence  of  that  misfortune  no  one  else, 
assuredly,  has  a  right  to  claim  dramatic  pre-emi 
nence.  The  one  person  for  whom  an  approach  to 
equality  may  be  claimed  is,  not  Adam  Bede,  but 
Arthur  Donnithorne.  If  the  story  had  ended,  as 
I  should  have  infinitely  preferred  to  see  it  end, 
with  Hetty's  execution,  or  even  with  her  reprieve, 
and  if  Adam  had  been  left  to  his  grief,  and  Dinah 
Morris  to  the  enjoyment  of  that  distinguished  celi 
bacy  for  which  she  was  so  well  suited,  then  I 
think  Adam  might  have  shared  the  honours  of  pre 
eminence  with  his  hapless  sweetheart.  But  as  it 
is,  the  continuance  of  the  book  in  his  interest  is 
fatal  to  him.  His  sorrow  at  Hetty's  misfortune 
is  not  a  sufficient  sorrow  for  the  situation.  That 
his  marriage  at  some  future  time  was  quite  pos 
sible,  and  even  natural,  I  readily  admit;  but  that 
was  matter  for  a  new  story. 

This  point  illustrates,  I  think,  the  great  advan 
tage  of  the  much-censured  method,  introduced  by 
Balzac,  of  continuing  his  heroes'  adventures  from 
tale  to  tale.  Or,  admitting  that  the  author  was  in 
disposed  to  undertake,  or  even  to  conceive,  in  its 


18  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

completeness,  a  new  tale,  in  which  Adam,  healed 
of  his  wound  by  time,  should  address  himself  to 
another  woman,  I  yet  hold  that  it  would  be  possi 
ble  tacitly  to  foreshadow  some  such  event  at  the 
close  of  the  tale  which  we  are  supposing  to  end 
with  Hetty's  death, — to  make  it  the  logical  conse 
quence  of  Adam's  final  state  of  mind.  Of  course 
circumstances  would  have  much  to  do  with  bring 
ing  it  to  pass,  and  these  circumstances  could  not 
be  foreshadowed;  but  apart  from  the  action  of 
circumstances  would  stand  the  fact  that,  to  begin 
with,  the  event  was  possible. 

The  assurance  of  this  possibility  is  what  I  should 
have  desired  the  author  to  place  the  sympathetic 
reader  at  a  stand-point  to  deduce  for  himself.  In 
every  novel  the  work  is  divided  between  the  writer 
and  the  reader;  but  the  writer  makes  the  reader 
very  much  as  he  makes  his  characters.  When  he 
makes  him  ill,  that  is,  makes  him  different,  he 
does  no  work;  the  writer  does  all.  When  he  makes 
him  well,  that  is,  makes  him  interested,  then  the 
reader  does  quite  half  the  labour.  In  making  such 
a  deduction  as  I  have  just  indicated,  the  reader 
would  be  doing  but  his  share  of  the  task ;  the  grand 
point  is  to  get  him  to  make  it.  I  hold  that  there 
is  a  way.  It  is  perhaps  a  secret;  but  until  it  is 
found  out,  I  think  that  the  art  of  story-telling 
cannot  be  said  to  have  approached  perfection. 

When  you  re-read  coldly  and  critically  a  book 


THE  NOVELS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT      19 

which  in  former  years  you  have  read  warmly  and 
carelessly,  you  are  surprised  to  see  how  it  changes 
its  proportions.  It  falls  away  in  those  parts  which 
have  been  pre-eminent  in  your  memory,  and  it  in 
creases  in  the  small  portions.  Until  I  lately  read 
Adam  Bede  for  a  second  time,  Mrs.  Poyser  was 
in  my  mind  its  representative  figure ;  for  I  remem 
bered  a  number  of  her  epigrammatic  sallies.  But 
now,  after  a  second  reading,  Mrs.  Poyser  is  the 
last  figure  I  think  of,  and  a  fresh  perusal  of  her 
witticisms  has  considerably  diminished  their  clas 
sical  flavour.  And  if  I  must  tell  the  truth,  Adam 
himself  is  next  to  the  last,  and  sweet  Dinah  Morris 
third  from  the  last.  The  person  immediately 
evoked  by  the  title  of  the  work  is  poor  Hetty 
Sorrel. 

Mrs.  Poyser  is  too  epigrammatic;  her  wisdom 
smells  of  the  lamp.  I  do  not  mean  to  say  that 
she  is  not  natural,  and  that  women  of  her  class 
are  not  often  gifted  with  her  homely  fluency,  her 
penetration,  and  her  turn  for  forcible  analogies. 
But  she  is  too  sustained ;  her  morality  is  too  shrill, 
—too  much  in  staccato;  she  too  seldom  subsides 
into  the  commonplace.  Yet  it  cannot  be  denied 
that  she  puts  things  very  happily.  Remonstrating 
with  Dinah  Morris  on  the  undue  disinterestedness 
of  her  religious  notions,  "But  for  the  matter  o' 
that,"  she  cries,  "if  everybody  was  to  do  like  you, 
the  world  must  come  to  a  stand-still ;  for  if  every- 


20  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

body  tried  to  do  without  house  and  home  and  eat 
ing  and  drinking,  and  was  always  talking  as  we 
must  despise  the  things  o'  the  world,  as  you  say, 
I  should  like  to  know  where  the  pick  of  the  stock, 
and  the  corn,  and  the  best  new  milk-cheeses  'ud 
have  to  go?  Everybody  'ud  be  wanting  to  make 
bread  o'  tail  ends,  and  everybody  'ud  be  running 
after  everybody  else  to  preach  to  'em,  i 'stead  o' 
bringing  up  their  families  and  laying  by  against 
a  bad  harvest. ' '  And  when  Hetty  comes  home  late 
from  the  Chase,  and  alleges  in  excuse  that  the 
clock  at  home  is  so  much  earlier  than  the  clock 
at  the  great  house:  "What,  you'd  be  wanting  the 
clock  set  by  gentlefolks'  time,  would  you?  an'  sit 
up  burning  candle,  and  lie  a-bed  wi'  the  sun 
a-bakin'  you,  like  a  cowcumber  i'  the  frame?" 
Mrs.  Poyser  has  something  almost  of  Yankee 
shrewdness  and  angularity;  but  the  figure  of  a 
New  England  rural  housewife  would  lack  a  whole 
range  of  Mrs.  Poyser 's  feelings,  which,  whatever 
may  be  its  effect  in  real  life,  gives  its  subject  in 
a  novel  at  least  a  very  picturesque  richness  of 
colour;  the  constant  sense,  namely,  of  a  superin 
cumbent  layer  of  "gentlefolks,"  whom  she  and  her 
companions  can  never  raise  their  heads  unduly 
without  hitting. 

My  chief  complaint  with  Adam  Bede  himself 
is  that  he  is  too  good.  He  is  meant,  I  conceive, 
to  be  every  inch  a  man;  but,  to  my  mind,  there 


THE  NOVELS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT     21 

are  several  inches  wanting.  He  lacks  spontaneity 
and  sensibility,  he  is  too  stiff-backed.  He  lacks 
that  supreme  quality  without  which  a  man  can 
never  be  interesting  to  men, — the  capacity  to  be 
tempted.  His  nature  is  without  richness  or  re 
sponsiveness.  I  doubt  not  that  such  men  as  he 
exist,  especially  in  the  author's  thrice-English 
Loamshire;  she  has  partially  described  them  as 
a  class,  with  a  felicity  which  carries  conviction. 
She  claims  for  her  hero  that,  although  a  plain 
man,  he  was  as  little  an  ordinary  man  as  he  was 
a  genius. 

"He  was  not  an  average  man.  Yet  such  men 
as  he  are  reared  here  and  there  in  every  generation 
of  our  peasant  artisans,  with  an  inheritance  of  af 
fections  nurtured  by  a  simple  family  life  of  com 
mon  need  and  common  industry,  and  an  inherit 
ance  of  faculties  trained  in  skillful,  courageous 
labour;  they  make  their  way  upward,  rarely  as 
geniuses,  most  commonly  as  painstaking,  honest 
men,  with  the  skill  and  conscience  to  do  well  the 
tasks  that  lie  before  them.  Their  lives  have  no 
discernible  echo  beyond  the  neighbourhood  where 
they  dwelt;  but  you  are  almost  sure  to  find  there 
some  good  piece  of  road,  some  building,  some  ap 
plication  of  mineral  produce,  some  improvement 
in  farming  practice,  some  reform  of  parish  abuses, 
with  which  their  names  are  associated  by  one  or 
two  generations  after  them.  Their  employers  were 


22  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

the  richer  for  them;  the  work  of  their  hands  has 
worn  well,  and  the  work  of  their  brains  has  guided 
well  the  hands  of  other  men." 

One  cannot  help  feeling  thankful  to  the  kindly 
writer  who  attempts  to  perpetuate  their  memories 
beyond  the  generations  which  profit  immediately 
by  their  toil.  If  she  is  not  a  great  dramatist, 
she  is  at  least  an  exquisite  describer.  But  one 
can  as  little  help  feeling  that  it  is  no  more  than  a 
strictly  logical  retribution,  that  in  her  hour  of 
need  (dramatically  speaking)  she  should  find  them 
indifferent  to  their  duties  as  heroes.  I  profoundly 
doubt  whether  the  central  object  of  a  novel  may 
successfully  be  a  passionless  creature.  The  ulti 
mate  eclipse,  both  of  Adam  Bede  and  of  Felix  Holt 
would  seem  to  justify  my  question.  Tom  Tulliver 
is  passionless,  and  Tom  Tulliver  lives  gratefully  in 
the  memory;  but  this,  I  take  it,  is  because  he  is 
strictly  a  subordinate  figure,  and  awakens  no  re 
action  of  feeling  on  the  reader's  part  by  usurping 
a  position  which  he  is  not  the  man  to  fill. 

Dinah  Morris  is  apparently  a  study  from  life; 
and  it  is  warm  praise  to  say,  that,  in  spite  of  the 
high  key  in  which  she  is  conceived,  morally,  she 
retains  many  of  the  warm  colours  of  life.  But 
I  confess  that  it  is  hard  to  conceive  of  a  woman 
so  exalted  by  religious  fervour  remaining  so  cool- 
headed  and  so  temperate.  There  is  in  Dinah  Mor 
ris  too  close  an  agreement  between  her  distin- 


THE  NOVELS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT      23 

guished  natural  disposition  and  the  action  of  her 
religious  faith.  If  by  nature  she  had  been  pas 
sionate,  rebellious,  selfish,  I  could  better  under 
stand  her  actual  self-abnegation.  I  would  look 
upon  it  as  the  logical  fruit  of  a  profound  religious 
experience.  But  as  she  stands,  heart  and  soul  go 
easily  hand  in  hand.  I  believe  it  to  be  very  un 
common  for  what  is  called  a  religious  conversion 
merely  to  intensify  and  consecrate  pre-existing  in 
clinations.  It  is  usually  a  change,  a  wrench;  and 
the  new  life  is  apt  to  be  the  more  sincere  as  the 
old  one  had  less  in  common  with  it.  But,  as  I 
have  said,  Dinah  Morris  bears  so  many  indications 
of  being  a  reflection  of  facts  well  known  to  the 
author, — and  the  phenomena  of  Methodism,  from 
the  frequency  with  which  their  existence  is  referred 
to  in  her  pages,  appear  to  be  so  familiar  to  her, 
— that  I  hesitate  to  do  anything  but  thankfully 
accept  her  portrait. 

About  Hetty  Sorrel  I  shall  have  no  hesitation 
whatever:  I  accept  her  with  all  my  heart.  Of  all 
George  Eliot's  female  figures  she  is  the  least  ambi 
tious,  and  on  the  whole,  I  think,  the  most  success 
ful.  The  part  of  the  story  which  concerns  her  is 
much  the  most  forcible ;  and  there  is  something  in 
finitely  tragic  in  the  reader's  sense  of  the  contrast 
between  the  sternly  prosaic  life  of  the  good  people 
about  her,  their  wholesome  decency  and  their  noon 
day  probity,  and  the  dusky  sylvan  path  along  which 


24  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

poor  Hetty  is  tripping,  light-footed,  to  her  ruin. 
Hetty's  conduct  throughout  seems  to  me  to  be 
thoroughly  consistent.  The  author  has  escaped  the 
easy  error  of  representing  her  as  in  any  degree 
made  serious  by  suffering.  She  is  vain  and  super 
ficial  by  nature;  and  she  remains  so  to  the  end. 

As  for  Arthur  Donnithorne,  I  would  rather  have 
had  him  either  better  or  worse.  I  would  rather 
have  had  a  little  more  premeditation  before  his 
fault,  or  a  little  more  repentance  after  it;  that  is, 
while  repentance  could  still  be  of  use.  Not  that, 
all  things  considered,  he  is  not  a  very  fair  image 
of  a  frank-hearted,  well-meaning,  careless,  self-in 
dulgent  young  gentleman;  but  the  author  has  in 
his  case  committed  the  error  which  in  Hetty's  she 
avoided, — the  error  of  showing  him  as  redeemed  by 
suffering.  I  cannot  but  think  that  he  was  as  weak 
as  she.  A  weak  woman,  indeed,  is  weaker  than  a 
weak  man;  but  Arthur  Donnithorne  was  a  super 
ficial  fellow,  a  person  emphatically  not  to  be  moved 
by  a  shock  of  conscience  into  a  really  interesting 
and  dignified  attitude,  such  as  he  is  made  to  as 
sume  at  the  close  of  the  book.  Why  not  see  things 
in  their  nakedness  ?  the  impatient  reader  is  tempted 
to  ask.  Why  not  let  passions  and  foibles  play 
themselves  out? 

It  is  as  a  picture,  or  rather  as  a  series  of  pic 
tures,  that  I  find  Adam  Bede  most  valuable.  The 
author  succeeds  better  in  drawing  attitudes  of  feel- 


THE  NOVELS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT      25 

ing  than  in  drawing  movements  of  feeling.  In 
deed,  the  only  attempt  at  development  of  character 
or  of  purpose  in  the  book  occurs  in  the  case  of 
Arthur  Donnithorne,  where  the  materials  are  of 
the  simplest  kind.  Hetty's  lapse  into  disgrace  is 
not  gradual,  it  is  immediate :  it  is  without  struggle 
and  without  passion.  Adam  himself  has  arrived 
at  perfect  righteousness  when  the  book  opens ;  and 
it  is  impossible  to  go  beyond  that.  In  his  case  too, 
therefore,  there  is  no  dramatic  progression.  The 
same  remark  applies  to  Dinah  Morris. 

It  is  not  in  her  conceptions  nor  her  composition 
that  George  Eliot  is  strongest :  it  is  in  her  touches. 
In  these  she  is  quite  original.  She  is  a  good  deal 
of  a  humourist,  and  something  of  a  satirist ;  but  she 
is  neither  Dickens  nor  Thackeray.  She  has  over 
them  the  great  advantage  that  she  is  also  a  good 
deal  of  a  philosopher;  and  it  is  to  this  union  of 
the  keenest  observation  with  the  ripest  reflection, 
that  her  style  owes  its  essential  force.  She  is  a 
thinker, — not,  perhaps,  a  passionate  thinker,  but 
at  least  a  serious  one;  and  the  term  can  be  ap 
plied  with  either  adjective  neither  to  Dickens  nor 
Thackeray.  The  constant  play  of  lively  and  vig- 
ourous  thought  about  the  objects  furnished  by  her 
observation  animates  these  latter  with  a  surprising 
richness  of  colour  and  a  truly  human  interest.  It 
gives  to  the  author's  style,  moreover,  that  lin 
gering,  affectionate,  comprehensive  quality  which 


26  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

is  its  chief  distinction ;  and  perhaps  occasionally  it 
makes  her  tedious,  George  Eliot  is  so  little  tedious, 
however,  because,  if,  on  the  one  hand,  her  reflection 
never  flags,  so,  on  the  other,  her  observation  never 
ceases  to  supply  it  with  material.  Her  observation, 
I  think,  is  decidedly  of  the  feminine  kind :  it  deals, 
in  preference,  with  small  things.  This  fact  may 
be  held  to  explain  the  excellence  of  what  I  have 
called  her  pictures,  and  the  comparative  feebleness 
of  her  dramatic  movement. 

The  contrast  here  indicated,  strong  in  Adam 
Bede,  is  most  striking  in  Felix  Holt,  the  Radical. 
The  latter  work  is  an  admirable  tissue  of  details; 
but  it  seems  to  me  quite  without  character  as  a 
composition.  It  leaves  upon  the  mind  no  single 
impression.  Felix  Holt's  radicalism,  the  pre 
tended  motive  of  the  story,  is  utterly  choked 
amidst  a  mass  of  subordinate  interests.  No  rep 
resentation  is  attempted  of  the  growth  of  his  opin 
ions,  or  of  their  action  upon  his  character;  he  is 
marked  by  the  same  singular  rigidity  of  outline 
and  fixedness  of  posture  which  characterized  Adam 
Bede, — except,  perhaps,  that  there  is  a  certain  in 
clination  towards  poetry  in  Holt's  attitude.  But 
if  the  general  outline  is  timid  and  undecided  in 
Felix  Holt,  the  different  parts  are  even  richer  than 
in  former  works.  There  is  no  person  in  the  book 
who  attains  to  triumphant  vitality;  but  there  is 
not  a  single  figure,  of  however  little  importance, 


THE  NOVELS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT      27 

that  has  not  caught  from  without  a  certain  reflec 
tion  of  life.  There  is  a  little  old  waiting-woman 
to  a  great  lady, — Mrs.  Denner  by  name, — who  does 
not  occupy  five  pages  in  the  story,  but  who  leaves 
upon  the  mind  a  most  vivid  impression  of  decent, 
contented,  intelligent,  half-stoical  servility. 

"  There  were  different  orders  of  beings, — so  ran 
Denner 's  creed, — and  she  belonged  to  another 
order  than  that  to  which  her  mistress  belonged. 
She  had  a  mind  as  sharp  as  a  needle,  and  would 
have  seen  through  and  through  the  ridiculous  pre 
tensions  of  a  born  servant  who  did  not  submis 
sively  accept  the  rigid  fate  which  had  given  her 
born  superiors.  She  would  have  called  such  9  pre 
tensions  the  wrigglings  of  a*  worm  that  tried  to 
walk  on  its  tail.  .  .  .  She  was  a  hard-headed, 
godless  little  woman,  but  with  a  character  to  be 
reckoned  on  as  you  reckon  on  the  qualities  of 
iron." 

"I'm  afraid  of  ever  expecting  anything  good 
again,"  her  mistress  says  to  her  in  a  moment  of 
depression. 

"  'That's  weakness,  madam.  Things  don't  hap 
pen  because  they  are  bad  or  good,  else  all  eggs 
would  be  addled  or  none  at  all,  and  at  the  most  it 
is  but  six  to  the  dozen.  There's  good  chances  and 
bad  chances,  and  nobody's  luck  is  pulled  only  by 
one  string.  .  .  .  There's  a  good  deal  of  pleas 
ure  in  life  for  you  yet.' 


28  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

il  'Nonsense!  There's  no  pleasure  for  old 
women.  .  .  .  What  are  your  pleasures,  Den- 
ner,  besides  being  a  slave  to  me?' 

''0,  there's  pleasure  in  knowing  one  is  not  a 
fool,  like  half  the  people  one  sees  about.  And 
managing  one's  husband  is  some  pleasure,  and 
doing  one's  business  well.  Why,  if  I've  only  got 
some  orange-flowers  to  candy,  I  shouldn't  like  to 
die  till  I  see  them  all  right.  Then  there 's  the  sun 
shine  now  and  then;  I  like  that,  as  the  cats  do. 
I  look  upon  it  life  is  like  our  game  at  whist,  when 
Banks  and  his  wife  come  to  the  still-room  of  an 
evening.  I  don't  enjoy  the  game  much,  but  I  like 
to  play  my  cards  well,  and  see  what  will  be  the 
end  of  it;  and  I  want  to  see  you  make  the  best  of 
your  hand,  madam,  for  your  luck  has  been  mine 
these  forty  years  now.  : 

And,  on  another  occasion,  when  her  mistress  ex 
claims,  in  a  fit  of  distress,  that  "God  was  cruel 
when  he  made  women,"  the  author  says: — 

"The  waiting-woman  had  none  of  that  awe 
which  could  be  turned  into  defiance;  the  sacred 
grove  was  a  common  thicket  to  her. 

"  'It  mayn't  be  good  luck  to  be  a  woman/  she 
said.  'But  one  begins  with  it  from  a  baby;  one 
gets  used  to  it.  And  I  shouldn't  like  to  be  a 
man, — to  cough  so  loud,  and  stand  straddling  about 
on  a  wet  day,  and  be  so  wasteful  with  meat  and 
drink.  They're  a  coarse  lot,  I  think.'  " 


THE  NOVELS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT      29 

I  should  think  they  were,  beside  Mrs.  Denner. 

This  glimpse  of  her  is  made  up  of  what  I 
have  called  the  author's  touches.  She  excels  in 
the  portrayal  of  homely  stationary  figures  for 
which  her  well-stored  memory  furnishes  her  with 
types.  Here  is  another  touch,  in  which  satire  pre 
dominates.  Harold  Transome  makes  a  speech  to 
the  electors  at  Treby. 

"Harold's  only  interruption  came  from  his  own 
party.  The  oratorical  clerk  at  the  Factory,  acting 
as  the  tribune  of  the  dissenting  interest,  and  feel 
ing  bound  to  put  questions,  might  have  been 
troublesome;  but  Ms  voice  being  unpleasantly 
sharp,  while  Harold's  was  full  and  penetrating, 
the  questioning  was  cried  down." 

Of  the  four  English  stories,  The  Mill  on  the 
Floss  seems  to  me  to  have  most  dramatic  continuity, 
in  distinction  from  that  descriptive,  discursive 
method  of  narration  which  I  have  attempted  to 
indicate.  After  Hetty  Sorrel,  I  think  Maggie  Tul- 
liver  the  most  successful  of  the  author's  young 
women,  and  after  Tito  Melema,  Tom  Tulliver  the 
best  of  her  young  men.  English  novels  abound  in 
pictures  of  childhood;  but  I  know  of  none  more 
truthful  and  touching  than  the  early  pages  of  this 
work.  Poor  erratic  Maggie  is  worth  a  hundred 
of  her  positive  brother,  and  yet  on  the  very 
threshold  of  life  she  is  compelled  to  accept  him 
as  her  master.  He  falls  naturally  into  the  man's 


30  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

privilege  of  always  being  in  the  right.  The  fol 
lowing  scene  is  more  than  a  reminiscence;  it  is 
a  real  retrospect.  Tom  and  Maggie  are  sitting 
upon  the  bough  of  an  elder-tree,  eating  jam-puffs. 
At  last  only  one  remains,  and  Tom  undertakes  to 
divide  it. 

"The  knife  descended  on  the  puff,  and  it  was 
in  two;  but  the  result  was  not  satisfactory  to 
Tom,  for  he  still  eyed  the  halves  doubtfully.  At 
last  he  said,  'Shut  your  eyes,  Maggie.' 

"  'What  for?' 

"  'You  never  mind  what  for, — shut  'em  when  I 
tell  you/ 

"Maggie  obeyed. 

"  'Now,  which '11  you  have,  Maggie,  right  hand 
or  left?' 

"  'I'll  have  that  one  with  the  jam  run  out/  said 
Maggie,  keeping  her  eyes  shut  to  please  Tom. 

"  'Why,  you  don't  like  that,  you  silly.  You 
may  have  it  if  it  comes  to  you  fair,  but  I  sha'n't 
give  it  to  you  without.  Right  or  left, — you  choose 
now.  Ha-a-a!'  said  Tom,  in  a  tone  of  exaspera 
tion,  as  Maggie  peeped.  'You  keep  your  eyes 
shut  now,  else  you  sha'n't  have  any.' 

"Maggie's  power  of  sacrifice  did  not  extend  so 
far;  indeed,  I  fear  she  cared  less  that  Tom  should 
enjoy  the  utmost  possible  amount  of  puff,  than  that 
he  should  be  pleased  with  her  for  giving  him  the 
best  bit.  So  she  shut  her  eyes  quite  close  until 


THE  NOVELS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT      31 

Tom  told  her  to  'say  which/  and  then  she  said, 
'Left  hand/ 

"  'You've  got  it/  said  Tom,  in  rather  a  bitter 
tone. 

"  'What!  the  bit  with  the  jam  run  out?7 

"  'No;  here,  take  it/  said  Tom,  firmly,  handing 
decidedly  the  best  piece  to  Maggie. 

"  '0,  please,  Tom,  have  it;  I  don't  mind, — I 
like  the  other;  please  take  this.' 

"  'No,  I  sha'n't/  said  Tom,  almost  crossly,  be 
ginning  on  his  own  inferior  piece. 

"Maggie,  thinking  it  was  of  no  use  to  contend 
further,  began  too,  and  ate  up  her  half  puff  with 
considerable  relish  as  well  as  rapidity.  But  Tom 
had  finished  first,  and  had  to  look  on  while  Maggie 
ate  her  last  morsel  or  two,  feeling  in  himself  a 
capacity  for  more.  Maggie  didn't  know  Tom  was 
looking  at  her:  she  was  see-sawing  on  the  elder- 
bough,  lost  to  everything  but  a  vague  sense  of  jam 
and  idleness. 

"  '  0,  you  greedy  thing ! '  said  Tom,  when  she 
had  swallowed  the  last  morsel." 

The  portions  of  the  story  which  bear  upon  the 
Dodson  family  are  in  their  way  not  unworthy  of 
Balzac;  only  that,  while  our  author  has  treated 
its  peculiarities  humourously,  Balzac  would  have 
treated  them  seriously,  almost  solemnly.  We  are 
reminded  of  him  by  the  attempt  to  classify  the 
Dodsons  socially  in  a  scientific  manner,  and  to 


32  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

accumulate  small  examples  of  their  idiosyncrasies. 
I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  the  resemblance  is  very 
deep. 

The  chief  defect — indeed,  the  only  serious  one 
— in  The  Mill  on  the  Floss  is  its  conclusion.  Such 
a  conclusion  is  in  itself  assuredly  not  illegitimate, 
and  there  is  nothing  in  the  fact  of  the  flood,  to  my 
knowledge,  essentially  unnatural:  what  I  object  to 
is  its  relation  to  the  preceding  part  of  the  story. 
The  story  is  told  as  if  it  were  destined  to  have,  if 
not  a  strictly  happy  termination,  at  least  one  within 
ordinary  probabilities.  As  it  stands,  the  denoue 
ment  shocks  the  reader  most  painfully.  Nothing 
has  prepared  him  for  it;  the  story  does  not  move 
towards  it;  it  casts  no  shadow  before  it.  Did 
such  a  denouement  lie  within  the  author's  inten 
tions  from  the  first,  or  was  it  a  tardy  expedient 
for  the  solution  of  Maggie's  difficulties?  This 
question  the  reader  asks  himself,  but  of  course  he 
asks  it  in  vain. 

For  my  part,  although,  as  long  as  humanity  is 
subject  to  floods  and  earthquakes,  I  have  no  objec 
tion  to  see  them  made  use  of  in  novels,  I  would 
in  this  particular  case  have  infinitely  preferred 
that  Maggie  should  have  been  left  to  her  own  de 
vices.  I  understand  the  author's  scruples,  and 
to  a  certain  degree  I  respect  them.  A  lonely  spin- 
sterhood  seemed  but  a  dismal  consummation  of 
her  generous  life ;  and  yet,  as  the  author  conceives, 


THE  NOVELS  OF  GEOEGE  ELIOT      33 

it  was  unlikely  that  she  would  return  to  Stephen 
Guest.  I  respect  Maggie  profoundly;  but  never 
theless  I  ask,  Was  this  after  all  so  unlikely?  I 
will  not  try  to  answer  the  question.  I  have  shown 
enough  courage  in  asking  it.  But  one  thing  is 
certain:  a  denouement  by  which  Maggie  should 
have  called  Stephen  back  would  have  been  ex 
tremely  interesting,  and  would  have  had  far  more 
in  its  favour  than  can  be  put  to  confusion  by  a 
mere  exclamation  of  horror. 

I  have  come  to  the  end  of  my  space  without 
speaking  of  Romola,  which,  as  the  most  important 
of  George  Eliot's  works,  I  had  kept  in  reserve.  I 
have  only  room  to  say  that  on  the  whole  I  think 
it  is  decidedly  the  most  important, — not  the  most 
entertaining  nor  the  most  readable,  but  the  one  in 
which  the  largest  things  are  attempted  and 
grasped.  The  figure  of  Savonarola,  subordinate 
though  it  is,  is  a  figure  on  a  larger  scale  than 
any  which  George  Eliot  has  elsewhere  undertaken ; 
and  in  the  career  of  Tito  Melema  there  is  a  fuller 
representation  of  the  development  of  a  character. 

Considerable  as  are  our  author's  qualities  as  an 
artist,  and  largely  as  they  are  displayed  in 
"Romola,"  the  book  strikes  me  less  as  a  work  of 
art  than  as  a  work  of  morals.  Like  all  of  George 
Eliot's  works,  its  dramatic  construction  is  feeble; 
the  story  drags  and  halts, — the  setting  is  too  large 
for  the  picture;  but  I  remember  that,  the  first 


34  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

time  I  read  it,  I  declared  to  myself  that  much 
should  be  forgiven  it  for  the  sake  of  its  generous 
feeling  and  its  elevated  morality.  I  still  recognize 
this  latter  fact,  but  I  think  I  find  it  more  on  a 
level  than  I  at  first  found  it  with  the  artistic 
conditions  of  the  book. 

"Our  deeds  determine  us,"  George  Eliot  says 
somewhere  in  Adam  Bede,  "as  much  as  we  deter 
mine  our  deeds. ' '  This  is  the  moral  lesson  of  Rom- 
ola.  A  man  has  no  associate  so  intimate  as  his  own 
character,  his  own  career, — his  present  and  his  past ; 
and  if  he  builds  up  his  career  of  timid  and  base 
actions,  they  cling  to  him  like  evil  companions, 
to  sophisticate,  to  corrupt,  and  to  damn  him.  As 
in  Maggie  Tulliver  we  had  a  picture  of  the  eleva 
tion  of  the  moral  tone  by  honesty  and  generosity, 
so  that  when  the  mind  found  itself  face  to  face 
with  the  need  for  a  strong  muscular  effort,  it  was 
competent  to  perform  it ;  so  in  Tito  we  have  a  pic 
ture  of  that  depression  of  the  moral  tone  by  falsity 
and  self-indulgence,  which  gradually  evokes  on 
every  side  of  the  subject  some  implacable  claim, 
to  be  avoided  or  propitiated.  At  last  all  his  un 
paid  debts  join  issue  before  him,  and  he  finds  the 
path  of  life  a  hideous  blind  alley. 

Can  any  argument  be  more  plain?  Can  any 
lesson  be  more  salutary?  "Under  every  guilty 
secret,"  writes  the  author,  with  her  usual  felicity, 
"there  is  a  hidden  brood  of  guilty  wishes,  whose 


THE  NOVELS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT      35 

unwholesome,  infecting  life  is  cherished  by  the 
darkness.  The  contaminating  effect  of  deeds  often 
lies  less  in  the  commission  than  in  the  consequent 
adjustment  of  our  desires, — the  enlistment  of  self- 
interest  on  the  side  of  falsity ;  as,  on  the  other  hand, 
the  purifying  influence  of  public  confession  springs 
from  the  fact,  that  by  it  the  hope  in  lies  is  forever 
swept  away,  and  the  soul  recovers  the  nolle  atti 
tude  of  simplicity."  And  again:  "Tito  was  ex 
periencing  that  inexorable  law  of  human  souls,  that 
we  prepare  ourselves  for  sudden  deeds  by  the  re 
iterated  choice  of  good  or  evil  that  gradually  de 
termines  character."  Somewhere  else  I  think  she 
says,  in  purport,  that  our  deeds  are  like  our  chil 
dren;  we  beget  them,  and  rear  them  and  cherish 
them,  and  they  grow  up  and  turn  against  us  and 
misuse  us. 

The  fact  that  has  led  me  to  a  belief  in  the  fun 
damental  equality  between  the  worth  of  Romola 
as  a  moral  argument  and  its  value  as  a  work  of 
art,  is  the  fact  that  in  each  character  it  seems 
to  me  essentially  prosaic.  The  excellence  both  of 
the  spirit  and  of  the  execution  of  the  book  is  em 
phatically  an  obvious  excellence.  They  make  no 
demand  upon  the  imagination  of  the  reader.  It 
is  true  of  both  of  them  that  he  who  runs  may  read 
them.  It  may  excite  surprise  that  I  should  inti 
mate  that  George  Eliot  is  deficient  in  imagination ; 
but  I  believe  that  I  am  right  in  so  doing.  Very 


36  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

readable  novels  have  been  written  without  imagina 
tion;  and  as  compared  with  writers  who,  like  Mr. 
Trollope,  are  totally  destitute  of  the  faculty, 
George  Eliot  may  be  said  to  be  richly  endowed 
with  it.  But  as  compared  with  writers  whom  we 
are  tempted  to  call  decidedly  imaginative,  she 
must,  in  my  opinion,  content  herself  with  the  very 
solid  distinction  of  being  exclusively  an  observer. 
In  confirmation  of  this  I  would  suggest  a  compari 
son  of  those  chapters  in  Adam  Bede  which  treat 
of  Hetty's  flight  and  wanderings,  and  those  of 
Miss  Bronte's  Jane  Eyre  which  describe  the  hero 
ine  's  escape  from  Rochester 's  house  and  subsequent 
perambulations.  The  former  are  throughout  ad 
mirable  prose;  the  latter  are  in  portions  very  good 
poetry. 

One  word  more.  Of  all  the  impressions — and 
they  are  numerous — which  a  reperusal  of  George 
Eliot's  writings  has  given  me,  I  find  the  strongest 
to  be  this:  that  (with  all  deference  to  Felix  Holt, 
the  Radical)  the  author  is  in  morals  and  aesthetics 
essentially  a  conservative.  In  morals  her  prob 
lems  are  still  the  old,  passive  problems.  I  use  the 
word  "old"  with  all  respect.  What  moves  her 
most  is  the  idea  of  a  conscience  harassed  by  the 
memory  of  slighted  obligations.  Unless  in  the  case 
of  Savonarola,  she  has  made  no  attempt  to  depict 
a  conscience  taking  upon  itself  great  and  novel 
responsibilities.  In  her  last  work,  assuredly  such 


THE  NOVELS  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT      37 

an  attempt  was — considering  the  title — conspicuous 
by  its  absence. 

Of  a  corresponding  tendency  in  the  second  de 
partment  of  her  literary  character, — or  perhaps 
I  should  say  in  a  certain  middle  field  where  morals 
and  aesthetics  move  in  concert, — it  is  very  difficult 
to  give  an  example.  A  tolerably  good  one  is  fur 
nished  by  her  inclination  to  compromise  with  the 
old  tradition — and  here  I  use  the  word  "old" 
without  respect — which  exacts  that  a  serious  story 
of  manners  shall  close  with  the  factitious  happi 
ness  of  a  fairy-tale.  I  know  few  things  more  irri 
tating  in  a  literary  way  than  each  of  her  final  chap 
ters, — for  even  in  The  Mill  on  the  Floss  there  is  a 
fatal  "Conclusion."  Both  as  an  artist  and  a 
thinker,  in  other  words,  our  author  is  an  optimist ; 
and  although  a  conservative  is  not  necessarily  an 
optimist,  I  think  an  optimist  is  pretty  likely  to 
be  a  conservative. 


ON  A  DRAMA  OF  MB.  BROWNING 


A  review  of  The  Inn  Album,  by  Robert  Browning, 
London,  Smith  &  Elder;  Boston,  J.  R.  Osgood  &  Co.  1875. 
Originally  published  in  The  Nation,  January  20,  1876. 


ON  A  DRAMA  OF  MR.  BROWNING 

THIS  is  a  decidedly  irritating  and  displeasing 
performance.  It  is  growing  more  difficult 
every  year  for  Mr.  Browning's  old  friends  to  fight 
his  battles  for  him,  and  many  of  them  will  feel  that 
on  this  occasion  the  cause  is  really  too  hopeless, 
and  the  great  poet  must  himself  be  answerable  for 
his  indiscretions. 

Nothing  that  Mr.  Browning  writes,  of  course, 
can  be  vapid;  if  this  were  possible,  it  would  be  a 
much  simpler  affair.  If  it  were  a  case  of  a  writer 
".running  thin,"  as  the  phrase  is,  there  would  be 
no  need  for  criticism;  there  would  be  nothing  in 
the  way  of  matter  to  criticise,  and  old  readers 
would  have  no  heart  to  reproach.  But  it  may  be 
said  of  Mr.  Browning  that  he  runs  thick  rather 
than  thin,  and  he  need  claim  none  of  the  tender 
ness  granted  to  those  who  have  used  themselves  up 
in  the  service  of  their  admirers.  He  is  robust  and 
vigorous;  more  so  now,  even,  than  heretofore,  and 
he  is  more  prolific  than  in  the  earlier  part  of  his 
career.  But  his  wantonness,  his  wil fulness,  his 
crudity,  his  inexplicable  want  of  secondary  thought, 
as  we  may  call  it,  of  the  stage  of  reflection  that 
41 


42  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

follows  upon  the  first  outburst  of  the  idea,  and 
smooths,  shapes,  and  adjusts  it — all  this  alloy  of 
his  great  genius  is  more  sensible  now  than  ever. 

The  Inn  Album  reads  like  a  series  of  rough  notes 
for  a  poem — of  hasty  hieroglyphics  and  symbols, 
decipherable  only  to  the  author  himself.  A  great 
poem  might  perhaps  have  been  made  of  it,  but 
assuredly  it  is  not  a  great  poem,  nor  any  poem 
whatsoever.  It  is  hard  to  say  very  coherently 
what  it  is.  Up  to  a  certain  point,  like  everything 
of  Mr.  Browning's,  it  is  highly  dramatic  and  vivid 
and  beyond  that  point,  like  all  its  companions,  it 
is  as  little  dramatic  as  possible.  It  is  not  narra 
tive,  for  there  is  not  a  line  of  comprehensible,  •con 
secutive  statement  in  the  two  hundred  and  eleven 
pages  of  the  volume.  It  is  not  lyrical,  for  there  is 
not  a  phrase  which  in  any  degree  does  the  office  of 
the  poetry  that  comes  lawfully  into  the  world- 
chants  itself,  images  itself,  or  lingers  in  the  mem 
ory. 

"That  bard's  a  Browning;  he  neglects  the 
form!"  one  of  the  characters  exclaims  with  irre 
sponsible  frankness.  That  Mr.  Browning  knows 
he  "neglects  the  form,"  and  does  not  particularly 
care,  does  not  very  much  help  matters;  it  only 
deepens  the  reader's  sense  of  the  graceless  and 
thankless  and  altogether  unavailable  character  of 
the  poem.  And  when  we  say  unavailable,  we  make 
the  only  reproach  which  is  worth  addressing  to  a 


ON  A  DRAMA  OF  MR.  BROWNING      43 

writer  of  Mr.  Browning's  intellectual  power.  A 
poem  with  so  many  presumptions  in  its  favour  as 
such  an  authorship  carries  with  it  is  a  thing  to  make 
some  intellectual  use  of,  to  care  for,  to  remember, 
to  return  to,  to  linger  over,  to  become  intimate  with. 
But  we  can  as  little  imagine  a  reader  (who  has  not 
the  misfortune  to  be  a  reviewer)  addressing  him 
self  more  than  once  to  the  perusal  of  The  Inn  Al 
bum,  as  we  fancy  cultivating  for  conversational 
purposes  the  society  of  a  person  afflicted  with  a 
grievous  impediment  of  speech. 

Two  gentlemen  have  been  playing  cards  all  night 
in  an  inn-parlour,  and  the  peep  of  day  finds  one 
of  them  ten  thousand  pounds  in  debt  to  the  other. 
The  tables  have  been  turned,  and  the  victim  is  the 
actual  victor.  The  elder  man  is  a  dissolute  and 
penniless  nobleman,  who  has  undertaken  the  so 
cial  education  of  the  aspiring  young  heir  of  a  great 
commercial  fortune,  and  has  taught  him  so  well 
that  the  once  ingenuous  lad  knows  more  than  his 
clever  master.  The  young  man  has  come  down 
into  the  country  to  see  his  cousin,  who  lives,  hard 
by  at  the  Hall,  with  her  aunt,  and  with  whom  his 
aristocratic  preceptor  recommends  him,  for  good 
worldly  reasons,  to  make  a  match. 

Infinite  discourse,  of  that  formidable  full- 
charged  sort  that  issues  from  the  lips  of  all  Mr. 
Browning's  characters,  follows  the  play,  and  as 
the  morning  advances  the  two  gentlemen  leave  the 


44  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

inn  and  go  for  a  walk.  Lord  K.  has  meanwhile 
related  to  his  young  companion  the  history  of  one 
of  his  own  earlier  loves — how  he  had  seduced  a 
magnificent  young  woman,  and  she  had  fairly 
frightened  him  into  offering  her  marriage.  On 
learning  that  he  had  meant  to  go  free  if  he  could, 
her  scorn  for  him  becomes  such  that  she  rejects 
his  offer  of  reparation  (a  very  fine  stroke)  and  en 
ters  into  wedlock  with  a  "smug,  crop-haired, 
smooth-chinned  sort  of  curate-creature."  The 
young  man  replies  that  he  himself  was  once  in 
love  with  a  person  that  quite  answers  to  this  de 
scription,  and  then  the  companions  separate — the 
pupil  to  call  at  the  Hall,  and  the  preceptor  to  catch 
the  train  for  London. 

The  reader  is  then  carried  back  to  the  inn-par 
lour,  into  which,  on  the  departure  of  the  gentle 
men,  two  ladies  have  been  ushered.  One  of  them 
is  the  young  man's  cousin,  who  is  playing  at  cross- 
purposes  with  her  suitor;  the  other  is  her  intimate 
friend,  arrived  on  a  flying  visit.  The  intimate 
friend  is  of  course  the  ex-victim  of  Lord  K.  The 
ladies  have  much  conversation —  all  of  it  rather 
more  ingeniously  inscrutable  than  that  of  their 
predecessors ;  it  terminates  in  the  exit  of  the  cousin 
and  the  entrance  of  the  young  man.  He  recog 
nizes  the  curate's  wife  as  the  object  of  his  own 
stifled  affection,  and  the  two  have,  as  the  French 
say,  an  intime  conversation. 


ON  A  DRAMA  OF  MR.  BROWNING      45 

At  last  Lord  K.  comes  back,  having  missed  his 
train,  and  finds  himself  confronted  with  his 
stormy  mistress.  Very  stormy  she  proves  to  be, 
and  her  outburst  of  renewed  indignation  and  irony 
contains  perhaps  the  most  successful  writing  in  the 
poem.  Touched  by  the  lady's  eloquence,  the 
younger  man,  who  has  hitherto  professed  an  almost 
passionate  admiration  for  his  companion,  begins  to 
see  him  in  a  less  interesting  light,  and  in  fact 
promptly  turns  and  reviles  him.  The  situation  is 
here  extremely  dramatic.  Lord  K.  is  a  cynic  of  a 
sneaking  pattern,  but  he  is  at  any  rate  a  man  of 
ideas.  He  holds  the  destiny  of  his  adversaries  in 
his  hands,  and,  snatching  up  the  inn  album  (which 
has  been  knocking  about  the  table  during  the  fore 
going  portions  of  the  narrative),  he  scrawls  upon 
it  his  ultimatum.  Let  the  lady  now  bestow  her 
affection  on  his  companion,  and  let  the  latter  ac 
cept  this  boon  as  a  vicarious  payment  of  the  gam 
bling  debt,  otherwise  Lord  K.  will  enlighten  the 
lady's  husband  as  to  the  extent  of  her  acquaintance 
with  himself. 

He  presents  the  open  page  to  the  heroine,  who 
reads  it  aloud,  and  for  an  answer  her  younger  and 
more  disinterested  lover,  "with  a  tiger-flash  yell, 
spring,  and  scream,"  throws  himself  on  the  in- 
sulter,  half  an  hour  since,  his  guide,  philosopher, 
and  friend,  and,  by  some  means  undescribed  by 
Mr.  Browning  puts  an  end  to  his  life.  This  inci- 


46  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

dent  is  related  in  two  pregnant  lines,  which, 
judged  by  the  general  standard  of  style  of  the  Inn 
Album,  must  be  considered  fine : 

"A  tiger-flash,  yell,  spring  and  scream:  halloo! 
Death's  out  and  on  him,  has  and  holds  him  —  ugh !  " 

The  effect  is  of  course  augmented  if  the  reader 
is  careful  to  make  the  l '  ugh ! ' '  rhyme  correctly 
with  the  "halloo!"  The  lady  takes  poison,  which 
she  carries  on  her  person  and  which  operates  in 
stantaneously,  and  the  young  man's  cousin,  re-en 
tering  the  room,  has  a  sufficiently  tremendous  sur 
prise. 

The  whole  picture  indefinably  appeals  to  the 
imagination.  There  is  something  very  curious 
about  it  and  even  rather  arbitrary,  and  the  reader 
wonders  how  it  came,  in  the  poet's  mind,  to  take 
exactly  that  shape.  It  is  very  much  as  if  he  had 
worked  backwards,  had  seen  his  denouement  first, 
as  a  mere  picture — the  two  corpses  in  the  inn-par 
lour,  and  the  young  man  and  his  cousin  confronted 
above  them — and  then  had  traced  back  the  possible 
motives  and  sources.  In  looking  for  these  Mr. 
Browning  has  of  course  encountered  a  vast  num 
ber  of  deep  discriminations  and  powerful  touches 
of  portraitures.  He  deals  with  human  character 
as  a  chemist  with  his  acids  and  alkalies,  and  while 
he  mixes  his  coloured  fluids  in  a  way  that  surprises 
the  profane,  knows  perfectly  well  what  he  is  about. 


ON  A  DRAMA  OF  MR.  BROWNING     47 

But  there  is  too  apt  to  be  in  his  style  that  hiss  and 
sputter  and  evil  aroma  which  characterise  the  pro 
ceedings  of  the  laboratory.  The  idea,  with  Mr. 
Browning,  always  tumbles  out  into  the  world  in 
some  grotesque  hind-foremost  manner ;  it  is  like  an 
unruly  horse  backing  out  of  his  stall,  and  stamping 
and  plunging  as  he  comes.  His  thought  knows  no 
simple  stage — at  the  very  moment  of  its  birth  it 
is  a  terribly  complicated  affair. 

We  frankly  confess,  at  the  risk  of  being  accused 
of  deplorable  levity  of  mind,  that  we  have  found 
this  want  of  clearness  of  explanation,  of  continuity, 
of  at  least  superficial  verisimilitude,  of  the  smooth, 
the  easy,  the  agreeable,  quite  fatal  to  our  enjoy 
ment  of  The  Inn  Album.  It  is  all  too  argumenta 
tive,  too  curious  and  recondite.  The  people  talk 
too  much  in  long  set  speeches,  at  a  moment's  no 
tice,  and  the  anomaly  so  common  in  Browning,  that 
the  talk  of  the  women  is  even  more  rugged  and  in 
soluble  than  that  of  the  men,  is  here  greatly  exag 
gerated.  We  are  reading  neither  prose  nor  poetry ; 
it  is  too  real  for  the  ideal,  and  too  ideal  for  the 
real.  The  author  of  The  Inn  Album  is  not  a  writer 
to  whom  we  care  to  pay  trivial  compliments,  and, 
it  is  not  a  trivial  complaint  to  say  that  his  book  is 
only  barely  comprehensible.  Of  a  successful  dra 
matic  poem  one  ought  to  be  able  to  say  more. 


SWINBURNE'S  ESSAYS 


A  review  of  Essays  and  Studies,  by  Algernon  Charles 
Swinburne.  London:  Chatto  &  Windus,  1875.  Originally 
published  in  The  Nation,  July  29,  1875. 


SWINBURNE'S  ESSAYS 

11  /TR.  SWINBURNE  has  by  this  time  impressed 
JA-JL  upon  the  general  public  a  tolerably  vivid  im 
age  of  his  literary  personality.  His  line  is  a  definite 
one ;  his  note  is  familiar,  and  we  know  what  to  ex 
pect  from  him.  He  was  at  pains,  indeed,  a  year  ago 
to  quicken  the  apprehension  of  American  readers  by 
an  effusion  directed  more  or  less  explicitly  to 
themselves.  This  piece  of  literature  was  brief,  but 
it  was  very  remarkable.  Mr.  Emerson  had  had  oc 
casion  to  speak  of  Mr.  Swinburne  with  qualified  ad 
miration  and  this  circumstance,  coming  to  Mr. 
Swinburne's  ears,  had  prompted  him  to  uncork 
on  the  spot  the  vials  of  his  wrath.  He  addressed 
to  a  newspaper  a  letter  of  which  it  is  but  a  colour 
less  account  to  say  that  it  embodied  the  very  hys 
terics  of  gross  vituperation. 

Mr.  Swinburne  has  some  extremely  just  remarks 
about  Byron's  unamenableness  to  quotation,  his 
having  to  be  taken  in  the  gross.  This  is  almost 
equally  true  of  our  author  himself;  he  must  be 
judged  by  all  he  has  done,  and  we  must  allow,  in 
our  judgment,  the  weight  he  would  obviously  claim 
for  it  to  his  elaborate  tribute  to  the  genius  of  Mr. 
51 


52  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

Emerson.  His  tone  has  two  distinct  notes — the 
note  of  measureless  praise  and  the  note  of  furious 
denunciation.  Each  is  in  need  of  a  correction,  but 
we  confess  that,  with  all  its  faults,  we  prefer  the 
former.  That  Mr.  Swinburne  has  a  kindness  for 
his  more  restrictive  strain  is,  however,  very  obvious. 
He  is  over-ready  to  sound  it,  and  he  is  not  particu 
lar  about  his  pretext. 

Some  people,  he  says,  for  instance,  affirm  that 
a  writer  may  have  a  very  effective  style,  yet  have 
nothing  of  value  to  express  with  it.  Mr.  Swin 
burne  demands  that  they  prove  their  assertion. 
"This  flattering  unction  the  very  foolishest  of  ma- 
lignants  will  hardly,  in  this  case  (that  of  Mr.  D. 
G.  Kossetti),  be  able  to  lay  upon  the  corrosive  sore 
which  he  calls  his  soul;  the  ulcer  of  ill-will  must 
rot  unrelieved  by  the  rancid  ointment  of  such 
fiction."  In  Mr.  W.  M.  Rossetti's  edition  of  Shel 
ley  there  is  in  a  certain  line,  an  interpolation  of 
the  word  "autumn."  "For  the  conception  of  this 
atrocity  the  editor  is  not  responsible ;  for  its  adop 
tion  he  is.  A  thousand  years  of  purgatorial  fire 
would  be  insufficient  expiation  for  the  criminal  on 
whose  deaf  and  desperate  head  must  rest  the  orig 
inal  guilt  of  defacing  the  text  of  Shelley  with  this 
most  damnable  corruption." 

The  essays  before  us  are  upon  Victor  Hugo,  D. 
G.  Eossetti,  "William  Morris,  Matthew  Arnold  as  a 
poet,  Shelley,  Byron,  Coleridge,  and  John  Ford. 


SWINBURNE'S  ESSAYS  53 

To  these  are  added  two  papers  upon  pictures — the 
drawings  of  the  old  masters  at  Florence  and  the 
Royal  Academy  Exhibition  of  1868.  Mr.  Swin 
burne,  in  writing  of  poets,  cannot  fail  to  say  a 
great  many  felicitous  things.  His  own  insight  into 
the  poetic  mystery  is  so  deep,  his  perception  in  mat 
ters  of  language  so  refined,  his  power  of  apprecia 
tion  so  large  and  active,  his  imagination,  especially, 
so  sympathetic  and  flexible,  that  we  constantly  feel 
him  to  be  one  who  has  a  valid  right  to  judge  and 
pass  sentence.  The  variety  of  his  sympathies  in 
poetry  is  especially  remarkable,  and  is  in  itself  a 
pledge  of  criticism  of  a  liberal  kind.  Victor  Hugo 
is  his  divinity — a  divinity  whom  indeed,  to  our 
sense,  he  effectually  conceals  and  obliterates  in  the 
suffocating  fumes  of  his  rhetoric.  On  the  other 
hand,  one  of  the  best  papers  in  the  volume  is  a 
disquisition  on  the  poetry  of  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold, 
of  which  his  relish  seems  hardly  less  intense  and 
for  whom  he  states  the  case  with  no  less  prodigious 
a  redundancy  of  phrase. 

Matthew  Arnold's  canons  of  style,  we  should 
have  said,  are  a  positive  negation  of  those  of  Mr. 
Swinburne's,  and  it  is  to  the  credit  of  the  latter 's 
breadth  of  taste  that  he  should  have  entered  into 
an  intellectual  temperament  which  is  so  little  his 
own.  The  other  articles  contain  similar  examples 
of  his  vivacity  and  energy  of  perception,  and  offer 
a  number  of  happy  judgments  and  suggestive  ob- 


54  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

servations.  His  estimate  of  Byron  as  a  poet  (not 
in  the  least  as  a  man — on  this  point  his  utterances 
are  consummately  futile)  is  singularly  discriminat 
ing;  his  measurement  of  Shelley's  lyric  force  is  elo 
quently  adequate;  his  closing  words  upon  John 
Ford  are  worth  quoting  as  a  specimen  of  strong 
apprehension  and  solid  statement.  Mr.  Swin 
burne  is  by  no  means  always  solid,  and  this  pas 
sage  represents  him  at  his  best : — 

"No  poet  is  less  forgettable  than  Ford;  none 
fastens  (as  it  were)  the  fangs  of  his  genius  and 
his  will  more  deeply  in  your  memory.  You  can 
not  shake  hands  with  him  and  pass  him  by ;  you 
cannot  fall  in  with  him  and  out  again  at  pleasure ; 
if  he  touch  you  once  he  takes  you,  and  what  he 
takes  he  keeps  his  hold  of ;  his  work  becomes  a  part 
of  your  thought  and  parcel  of  your  spiritual  furni 
ture  for  ever ;  he  signs  himself  upon  you  as  with  a 
seal  of  deliberate  and  decisive  power.  His  force  is 
never  the  force  of  accident;  the  casual  divinity  of 
beauty  which  falls,  as  though  direct  from  heaven, 
upon  stray  lines  and  phrases  of  some  poets,  falls 
never  by  any  such  heavenly  chance  on  his;  his 
strength  of  impulse  is  matched  by  his  strength  of 
will ;  he  never  works  more  by  instinct  than  by  reso 
lution  ;  he  knows  what  he  would  have  and  what  he 
will  do,  and  gains  his  end  and  does  his  work  with 
full  conscience  of  purpose  and  insistence  of  de 
sign.  By  the  might  of  a  great  will  seconded  by  the 


SWINBURNE'S  ESSAYS  55 

force  of  a  great  hand  he  won  the  place  he  holds 
against  all  odds  of  rivalry  in  a  race  of  rival 
giants. ' ' 

On  the  other  hand,  Mr.  Swinburne  is  constantly 
liable  on  this  same  line  to  lapse  into  flagrant  levity 
and  perversity  of  taste ;  as  in  saying  that  he  cannot 
consider  Wordsworth  ''as  mere  poet"  equal  to 
Coleridge  as  mere  poet;  in  speaking  of  Alfred  de 
Musset  as  ''the  female  page  or  attendant  dwarf" 
of  Byron,  and  his  poems  as  ' '  decoctions  of  watered 
Byronism";  or  in  alluding  jauntily  and  en  passant 
to  Gautier's  Mademoiselle  de  Maupin-  as  ''the  most 
perfect  and  exquisite  book  of  modern  times." 

To  note,  however,  the  points  at  which  Mr.  Swin 
burne's  judgment  hits  the  mark,  or  the  points  at 
which  it  misses  it,  is  comparatively  superfluous,  in 
asmuch  as  both  of  these  cases  seem  to  us  essentially 
accidental.  His  book  is  not  at  all  a  book  of  judg 
ment  ;  it  is  a  book  of  pure  imagination.  His  genius 
is  for  style  simply,  and  not  in  the  least  for  thought 
nor  for  real  analysis ;  he  goes  through  the  motions 
of  criticism,  and  makes  a  considerable  show  of 
logic  and  philosophy,  but  with  deep  appreciation 
his  writing  seems  to  us  to  have  very  little  to  do. 

He  is  an  imaginative  commentator,  often  of  a 
very  splendid  kind,  but  he  is  never  a  real  inter 
preter  and  rarely  a  trustworthy  guide.  He  is  a 
writer,  and  a  writer  in  constant  quest  of  a  theme. 
He  has  an  inordinate  sense  of  the  picturesque,  and 


56  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

he  finds  his  theme  in  those  subjects  and  those  writ 
ers  which  gratify  it.  "When  they  gratify  it  highly, 
he  conceives  a  boundless  relish  for  them ;  they  give 
him  his  chance,  and  he  turns-on  the  deluge  of  his 
exorbitant  homage.  His  imagination  kindles,  he 
abounds  in  their  own  sense,  when  they  give  him  an 
inch  he  takes  an  ell,  and  quite  loses  sight  of  the 
subject  in  the  entertainment  he  finds  in  his  own 
word-spinning.  In  this  respect  he  is  extraor 
dinarily  accomplished:  he  very  narrowly  misses 
having  a  magnificent  style.  On  the  imaginative 
side,  his  style  is  almost  complete,  and  seems  ca 
pable  of  doing  everything  that  picturesqueness  de 
mands.  There  are  few  writers  of  our  day  who 
could  have  produced  this  description  of  a  thunder 
storm  at  sea.  Mr.  Swinburne  gives  it  to  us  as  the 
likeness  of  Victor  Hugo's  genius: — 

"  About  midnight,  the  thundercloud  was  full 
overhead,  full  of  incessant  sound  and  fire,  lighten 
ing  and  darkening  so  rapidly  that  it  seemed  to  have 
life,  and  a  delight  in  its  life.  At  the  same  hour, 
the  sky  was  clear  to  the  west,  and  all  along  the  sea- 
line  there  sprang  and  sank  as  to  music  a  restless 
dance  or  chase  of  summer  lightnings  across  the 
lower  sky:  a  race  and  riot  of  lights,  beautiful  and 
rapid  as  a  course  of  shining  Oceanides  along  the 
tremulous  floor  of  the  sea.  Eastward,  at  the  same 
moment,  the  space  of  clear  sky  was  higher  and 


SWINBURNE'S  ESSAYS  57 

wider,  a  splendid  semicircle  of  too  intense  purity  to 
be  called  blue;  it  was  of  no  colour  nameable  by 
man;  and  midway  in  it,  between  the  stars  and  the 
sea,  hung  the  motionless  full  moon ;  Artemis  watch 
ing  with  serene  splendour  of  scorn  the  battle  of  Ti 
tans  and  the  revel  of  nymphs  from  her  stainless 
and  Olympian  summit  of  divine  indifferent  light. 
Underneath  and  about  us,  the  sea  was  paved  with 
flame;  the  whole  water  trembled  and  hissed  with 
phosphoric  fire;  even  through  the  wind  and  thun 
der  I  could  hear  the  crackling  and  sputtering  of  the 
water-sparks.  In  the  same  heaven  and  in  the 
same  hour  there  shone  at  once  the  three  contrasted 
glories,  golden  and  fiery  and  white,  of  moonlight, 
and  of  the  double  lightning,  forked  and  sheet ;  and 
under  all  this  miraculous  heaven  lay  a  flaming  floor 
of  water." 

But  with  this  extravagant  development  of  the 
imagination  there  is  no  commensurate  develop 
ment  either  of  the  reason  or  of  the  moral  sense. 
One  of  these  defects  is,  to  our  mind,  fatal  to  Mr. 
Swinburne's  style;  the  other  is  fatal  to  his  tone,  to 
his  temper,  to  his  critical  pretensions.  His  style 
is  without  measure,  without  discretion,  without 
sense  of  what  to  take  and  what  to  leave;  after  a 
few  pages,  it  becomes  intolerably  fatiguing.  It  is 
always  listening  to  itself — always  turning  its  head 
over  its  shoulders  to  see  its  train  flowing  behind  it. 


58  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

The  train  shimmers  and  tumbles  in  a  very  gorgeous 
fashion,  but  the  rustle  of  its  embroidery  is  fatally 
importunate. 

Mr.  Swinburne  is  a  dozen  times  too  verbose;  at 
least  one-half  of  his  phrases  are  what  the  French 
call  phrases  in  the  air.  One-half  of  his  sentence  is 
always  a  repetition,  for  mere  fancy's  sake  and 
nothing  more,  of  the  meaning  of  the  other  half — a 
play  upon  its  words,  an  echo,  a  reflection,  a  dupli 
cation.  This  trick,  of  course,  makes  a  writer  for 
midably  prolix.  What  we  have  called  the  absence 
of  the  moral  sense  of  the  writer  of  these  essays  is, 
however,  their  most  disagreeable  feature.  By  this 
we  do  not  mean  that  Mr.  Swinburne  is  not  didactic, 
nor  edifying,  nor  devoted  to  pleading  the  cause  of 
virtue.  We  mean  simply  that  his  moral  plummet 
does  not  sink  at  all,  and  that  when  he  pretends  to 
drop  it  he  is  simply  dabbling  in  the  relatively  very 
shallow  pool  of  the  picturesque. 

A  sense  of  the  picturesque  so  refined  as  Mr. 
Swinburne's  will  take  one  a  great  way,  but  it  will 
by  no  means,  in  dealing  with  things  whose  great 
value  is  in  what  they  tell  us  of  human  character, 
take  one  all  the  way.  One  breaks  down  with  it  (if 
one  treats  it  as  one's  sole  support)  sooner  or  later 
in  aesthetics;  one  breaks  down  with  it  very  soon 
indeed  in  psychology. 

We  do  not  remember  in  this  whole  volume  a  sin 
gle  instance  of  delicate  moral  discrimination — a  sin- 


SWINBURNE'S  ESSAYS  59 

gle  case  in  which  the  moral  note  has  been  struck,  in 
which  the  idea  betrays  the  smallest  acquaintance 
with  the  conscience.  The  moral  realm  for  Mr. 
Swinburne  is  simply  a  brilliant  chiaroscuro  of  cos 
tume  and  posture.  This  makes  all  Mr.  Swin 
burne  's  magnificent  talk  about  Victor  Hugo 's  great 
criminals  and  monstrosities,  about  Shelley's  Count 
Cenci,  and  Browning's  Guido  Franchesini,  and 
about  dramatic  figures  generally,  quite  worthless  as 
anything  but  amusing  fantasy.  As  psychology  it 
is,  to  our  sense,  extremely  puerile;  for  we  do  not 
mean  simply  to  say  that  the  author  does  not  under 
stand  morality — a  charge  to  which  he  would  be 
probably  quite  indifferent ;  but  that  he  does  not  at 
all  understand  immorality.  Such  a  passage  as  his 
rhapsody  upon  Victor  Hugo's  Josiane  ("such  a 
pantheress  may  be  such  a  poetess,"  etc.)  means  ab 
solutely  nothing.  It  is  entertaining  as  pictorial 
writing — though  even  in  this  respect  as  we  have 
said,  thanks  to  excess  and  redundancy,  it  is  the  pic 
turesque  spoiled  rather  than  achieved;  but  as  an 
attempt  at  serious  analysis  it  seems  to  us,  like  many 
of  its  companions,  simply  ghastly — ghastly  in  its 
poverty  of  insight  and  its  pretension  to  make  mere 
lurid  imagery  do  duty  as  thought. 


THE  POETEY  OF  WILLIAM  MORRIS 


I.  A  review  of  The  Life  and  Death  of  Jason:     A  poem. 
By    William    Morris,     Boston:     Roberts     Brothers.     1867, 
Originally  published  in  North  American  Review,  October, 
1867. 

II.  A  review  of  The  Earthly  Paradise:    A   poem.     By 
William    Morris,    Boston:     Roberts    Bros.     1868.     Origin 
ally  published  in  The  Nation,  July  9,  1868. 

The  Earthly  Paradise;  Parts  I  and  II  as  originally 
published  in  London  by  F.  S.  Ellis  in  1868,  is  in  one  volume, 
and  was  issued  the  same  year  in  Boston  by  Roberts  Brothers. 
Parts  III  and  IV  were  issued  as  volumes  II  and  III  under 
the  same  title,  in  London  in  1870,  and  in  Boston  in  1870- 
71. 


THE  POETRY  OF  WILLIAM  MORRIS 

I.   THE  LIFE  AND  DEATH  OF  JASON 

IN  this  poetical  history  of  the  fortunate — the  un 
fortunate — Jason,  Mr.  Morris  has  written  a  book 
of  real  value.  It  is  some  time  since  we  have  met 
with  a  work  of  imagination  of  so  thoroughly  satis 
factory  a  character, — a  work  read  with  an  enjoy 
ment  so  unalloyed  and  so  untempered  by  the  desire 
to  protest  and  to  criticise.  The  poetical  firmament 
within  these  recent  years  has  been  all  alive  with 
unprophesied  comets  and  meteors,  many  of  them  of 
extraordinary  brilliancy,  but  most  of  them  very 
rapid  in  their  passage.  Mr.  Morris  gives  us  the 
comfort  of  feeling  that  he  is  a  fixed  star,  and  that 
his  radiance  is  not  likely  to  be  extinguished  in  a 
draught  of  wind, — after  the  fashion  of  Mr.  Alex 
ander  Smith,  Mr.  Swinburne  and  Miss  Ingelow. 

Mr.  Morris 's  poem  is  ushered  into  the  world  with 
a  very  florid  birthday  speech  from  the  pen  of  the 
author  of  the  too  famous  Poems  and  Ballads, — a 
circumstance,  we  apprehend,  in  no  small  degree 
prejudicial  to  its  success.  But  we  hasten  to  assure 
all  persons  whom  the  knowledge  of  Mr.  Swin 
burne's  enthusiasm  may  have  led  to  mistrust  the 
63 


64  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

character  of  the  work,  that  it  has  to  our  perception 
nothing  in  common  with  this  gentleman's  own  pro 
ductions,  and  that  his  article  proves  very  little  more 
than  that  his  sympathies  are  wiser  than  his  per 
formance.  If  Mr.  Morris's  poem  may  be  said  to 
remind  us  of  the  manner  of  any  other  writer,  it  is 
simply  of  that  of  Chaucer ;  and  to  resemble  Chaucer 
is  a  great  safeguard  against  resembling  Swinburne. 

The  Life  and  Death  of  Jason,  then,  is  a  narrative 
poem  on  a  Greek  subject,  written  in  a  genuine 
English  style.  With  the  subject  all  reading  people 
are  familiar,  and  we  have  no  need  to  retrace  its  de 
tails.  But  it  is  perhaps  not  amiss  to  transcribe  the 
few  pregnant  lines  of  prose  into  which,  at  the  out 
set,  Mr.  Morris  has  condensed  the  argument  of  his 
poem : — 

"  Jason  the  son  of  JEson,  king  of  lolchos,  having 
come  to  man's  estate,  demanded  of  Pelias  his 
father's  kingdom,  which  he  held  wrongfully.  But 
Pelias  answered,  that  if  he  would  bring  from  Col 
chis  the  golden  fleece  of  the  ram  that  had  carried 
Phryxus  thither,  he  would  yield  him  his  right. 
Whereon  Jason  sailed  to  Colchis  in  the  ship  Argo, 
with  other  heroes,  and  by  means  of  Medea,  the 
king's  daughter,  won  the  fleece;  and  carried  off  also 
Medea;  and  so,  after  many  troubles,  came  back  to 
lolchos  again.  There,  by  Medea's  wiles,  was  Peliaa 
slain;  but  Jason  went  to  Corinth,  and  lived  with 
Medea  happily,  till  he  was  taken  with  the  love  of 


THE  POETRY  OF  WILLIAM  MORRIS     65 

Glauce,  the  king's  daughter  of  Corinth,  and  must 
needs  wed  her;  whom  also  Medea  destroyed,  and 
fled  to  ^Egeus  at  Athens ;  and  not  long  after  Jason 
died  strangely." 

The  style  of  this  little  fragment  of  prose  is  not 
an  unapt  measure  of  the  author's  poetical  style, — 
quaint,  but  not  too  quaint,  more  Anglo-Saxon  than 
Latin,  and  decidedly  laconic.  For  in  spite  of  the 
great  length  of  his  work,  his  manner  is  by  no  means 
diffuse.  His  story  is  a  long  one,  and  he  wishes  to  do 
it  justice ;  but  the  movement  is  rapid  and  business 
like,  and  the  poet  is  quite  guiltless  of  any  wanton 
lingering  along  the  margin  of  the  subject  matter, — 
after  the  manner,  for  instance,  of  Keats, — to  whom, 
individually,  however,  we  make  this  tendency  no 
reproach.  Mr.  Morris's  subject  is  immensely  rich, 
—heavy  with  its  richness, — and  in  the  highest  de 
gree  romantic  and  poetical.  For  the  most  part,  of 
course,  he  found  not  only  the  great  contours,  but 
the  various  incidents  and  episodes,  ready  drawn  to 
his  hand;  but  still  there  was  enough  wanting  to 
make  a  most  exhaustive  drain  upon  his  ingenuity 
and  his  imagination.  And  not  only  these  faculties 
have  been  brought  into  severe  exercise,  but  the 
strictest  good  taste  and  good  sense  were  called  into 
play,  together  with  a  certain  final  gift  which  we 
hardly  know  how  to  name,  and  which  is  by  no 
means  common,  even  among  very  clever  poets, — a 
comprehensive  sense  of  form,  of  proportion,  and  of 


66  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

real  completeness,  without  which  the  most  brilliant 
efforts  of  the  imagination  are  a  mere  agglomeration 
of  ill-reconciled  beauties.  The  legend  of  Jason  is 
full  of  strangely  constructed  marvels  and  elaborate 
prodigies  and  horrors,  calculated  to  task  heavily 
an  author's  adroitness. 

We  have  so  pampered  and  petted  our  sense  of  the 
ludicrous  of  late  years,  that  it  is  quite  the  spoiled 
child  of  the  house,  and  without  its  leave  no  guest 
can  be  honourably  entertained.  It  is  very  true 
that  the  atmosphere  of  Grecian  mythology  is  so 
entirely  an  artificial  one,  that  we  are  seldom 
tempted  to  refer  its  weird  anomalous  denizens 
to  our  standard  of  truth  and  beauty.  Truth, 
indeed,  is  at  once  put  out  of  the  question ;  but  one 
would  say  beforehand,  that  many  of  the  creations 
of  Greek  fancy  were  wanting  even  in  beauty,  or  at 
least  in  that  ease  and  simplicity  which  has  been  ac 
quired  in  modern  times  by  force  of  culture.  But 
habit  and  tradition  have  reconciled  us  to  these 
things  in  their  native  forms,  and  Mr.  Morris's  skill 
reconciles  us  to  them  in  his  modern  and  composite 
English. 

The  idea,  for  instance,  of  a  flymg  ram,  seems,  to 
an  undisciplined  fancy,  a  not  especially  happy 
creation,  nor  a  very  promising  theme  for  poetry; 
but  Mr.  Morris,  without  diminishing  its  native 
oddity,  has  given  it  an  ample  romantic  dig 
nity.  So,  again,  the  sowing  of  the  dragon's  teeth 


THE  POETRY  OF  WILLIAM  MORRIS     67 

at  Colchis,  and  the  springing  up  of  mutually  op 
posed  armed  men,  seems  too  complex  and  recon 
dite  a  scene  to  be  vividly  and  gracefully  realized; 
but  as  it  stands,  it  is  one  of  the  finest  passages  in 
Mr.  Morris's  poem.  His  great  stumbling-block, 
however,  we  take  it,  was  the  necessity  of  maintain 
ing  throughout  the  dignity  and  prominence  of  his 
hero.  From  the  moment  that  Medea  comes  into  the 
poem,  Jason  falls  into  the  second  place,  and  keeps 
it  to  the  end.  She  is  the  all-wise  and  all-brave 
helper  and  counsellor  at  Colchis,  and  the  guardian 
angel  of  the  returning  journey.  She  saves  her 
companions  from  the  Circean  enchantments,  and 
she  withholds  them  from  the  embraces  of  the 
Sirens.  She  effects  the  death  of  Pelias,  and  assures 
the  successful  return  of  the  Argonauts.  And 
finally — as  a  last  claim  upon  her  interest — she  is 
slighted  and  abandoned  by  the  man  of  her  love. 
Without  question,  then,  she  is  the  central  figure 
of  the  poem, — a  powerful  and  enchanting  figure, — 
a  creature  of  barbarous  arts,  and  of  exquisite  hu 
man  passions.  'Jason  accordingly  possesses  only 
that  indirect  hold  upon  our  attention  which  belongs 
to  the  Virgilian  ^]neas;  although  Mr.  Morris  has 
avoided  Virgil's  error  of  now  and  then  allowing 
his  hero  to  be  contemptible. 

A  large  number,  however,  of  far  greater  draw 
backs  than  any  we  are  able  to  mention  could  not 
materially  diminish  the  powerful  beauty  of  this 


68  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

fantastic  legend.  It  is  as  rich  in  adventure  as  the 
Odyssey,  and  very  much  simpler.  Its  prime  ele 
ments  are  of  the  most  poetical  and  delightful  kind. 
What  can  be  more  thrilling  than  the  idea  of  a 
great  boatful  of  warriors  embarking  upon  dreadful 
seas,  not  for  pleasure,  nor  for  conquest,  nor  for 
any  material  advantage,  but  for  the  simple  discov 
ery  of  a  jealously  watched,  magically  guarded 
relic?  There  is  in  the  character  of  the  object  of 
their  quest  something  heroically  unmarketable,  or 
at  least  unavailable. 

But  of  course  the  story  owes  a  vast  deal  to  its  epi 
sodes,  and  these  have  lost  nothing  in  Mr.  Morris's 
hands.  One  of  the  most  beautiful — the  well  known 
adventure  of  Hylas — occurs  at  the  very  outset. 
The  beautiful  young  man,  during  a  halt  of  the  ship, 
wanders  inland  through  the  forest,  and,  passing 
beside  a  sylvan  stream,  is  espied  and  incontinently 
loved  by  the  water  nymphs,  who  forthwith  "de 
tach"  one  of  their  number  to  work  his  seduction. 
This  young  lady  assumes  the  disguise  and  speech 
of  a  Northern  princess,  clad  in  furs,  and  in  this 
character  sings  to  her  victim  "a  sweet  song,  sung 
not  yet  to  any  man. ' '  Very  sweet  and  truly  lyrical 
it  is  like  all  the  songs  scattered  through  Mr.  Mor 
ris's  narrative.  We  are,  indeed,  almost  in  doubt 
whether  the  most  beautiful  passages  in  the  poem  do 
not  occur  in  the  series  of  songs  in  the  fourteenth 
book. 


THE  POETRY  OF  WILLIAM  MORRIS      69 

The  ship  has  already  touched  at  the  island  of 
Circe,  and  the  sailors,  thanks  to  the  earnest  warn 
ings  of  Medea,  have  abstained  from  setting  foot 
on  the  fatal  shore ;  while  Medea  has,  in  turn,  been 
warned  by  the  enchantress  against  the  allurements 
of  the  Sirens.  As  soon  as  the  ship  draws  nigh, 
these  fair  beings  begin  to  utter  their  irresistible 
notes.  All  eyes  are  turned  lovingly  on  the  shore, 
the  rowers'  charmed  muscles  relax,  and  the  ship 
drifts  landward.  But  Medea  exhorts  and  entreats 
her  companions  to  preserve  their  course.  Jason 
himself  is  not  untouched,  as  Mr.  Morris  delicately 
tells  us, —  ' '  a  moment  Jason  gazed. ' '  But  Orpheus 
smites  his  lyre  before  it  is  too  late,  and  stirs  the 
languid  blood  of  his  comrades.  The  Sirens  strike 
their  harps  amain,  and  a  conflict  of  song  arises. 
The  Sirens  sing  of  the  cold,  the  glittering,  the  idle 
delights  of  their  submarine  homes;  while  Orpheus 
tells  of  the  warm  and  pastoral  landscapes  of 
Greece.  We  have  no  space  for  quotation ;  of  course 
Orpheus  carries  the  day.  But  the  finest  and  most 
delicate  practical  sense  is  shown  in  the  alternation 
of  the  two  lyrical  arguments, — the  soulless  sweet 
ness  of  the  one,  and  the  deep  human  richness  of  the 
other. 

There  is  throughout  Mr.  Morris's  poem  a  great 
unity  and  evenness  of  excellence,  which  make  se 
lection  and  quotation  difficult;  but  of  impressive 
touches  in  our  reading  we  noticed  a  very  great 


70  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

number.  We  content  ourselves  with  mentioning  a 
single  one.  When  Jason  has  sown  his  bag  of 
dragon 's  teeth  at  Colchis,  and  the  armed  fighters 
have  sprung  up  along  the  furrows,  and  under  the 
spell  contrived  by  Medea  have  torn  each  other  to 
death : — 

"  One  man  was  left  alive,  but  wounded  sore, 
Who,  staring  round  about  and  seeing  no  more 
His  brothers'  spears  against  him,  fixed  his  eyes 
Upon  the  queller  of  those  mysteries. 
Then  dreadfully  they  gleamed,  and  with  no  word, 
He  tottered  towards  him  with  uplifted  sword. 
But  scarce  he  made  three  paces  down  the  field, 
Ere  chill  death  seized  his  heart,  and  on  his  shield 
Clattering  he  fell." 

We  have  not  spoken  of  Mr.  Morris's  versification 
nor  of  his  vocabulary.  We  have  only  room  to  say 
that,  to  our  perception,  the  first  in  its  facility  and 
harmony,  and  the  second  in  its  abundance  and 
studied  simplicity,  leave  nothing  to  be  desired. 
There  are  of  course  faults  and  errors  in  his  poem, 
but  there  are  none  that  are  not  trivial  and  easily 
pardoned  in  the  light  of  the  fact  that  he  has  given 
us  a  work  of  consummate  art  and  of  genuine 
beauty.  He  has  foraged  in  a  treasure-house;  he 
has  visited  the  ancient  world,  and  come  back  with 
a  massive  cup  of  living  Greek  wine.  His  project 
was  no  light  ta?k,  but  he  has  honourably  fulfilled 


THE  POETRY  OF  WILLIAM  MORRIS      71 

it.  He  has  enriched  the  language  with  a  narrative 
poem  which  we  are  sure  that  the  public  will  not 
suffer  to  fall  into  the  ranks  of  honoured  but  un- 
cherished  works, — objects  of  vague  and  sapient 
reference, — but  will  continue  to  read  and  to  enjoy. 
In  spite  of  its  length,  the  interest  of  the  story  never 
flags,  and  as  a  work  of  art  it  never  ceases  to  be 
pure.  To  the  jaded  intellects  of  the  present  mo 
ment,  distracted  with  the  strife  of  creeds  and  the 
conflict  of  theories,  it  opens  a  glimpse  into  a  world 
where  they  will  be  called  upon  neither  to  choose,  to 
criticise,  nor  to  believe,  but  simply  to  feel,  to  look, 
and  to  listen. 

II.    THE  EARTHLY  PARADISE 

This  new  volume  of  Mr.  Morris  is,  we  think,  a 
book  for  all  time;  but  it  is  especially  a  book  for 
these  ripening  summer  days.  To  sit  in  the  open 
shade,  inhaling  the  heated  air,  and,  while  you  read 
these  perfect  fairy  tales,  these  rich  and  pathetic 
human  traditions  to  glance  up  from  your  page  at 
the  clouds  and  the  trees,  is  to  do  as  pleasant  a  thing 
as  the  heart  of  man  can  desire.  Mr.  Morris 's  book 
abounds  in  all  the  sounds  and  sights  and  sensations 
of  nature,  in  the  warmth  of  the  sunshine,  the  mur 
mur  of  forests,  and  the  breath  of  ocean-scented 
breezes.  The  fullness  of  physical  existence  which 
belongs  to  climates  where  life  is  spent  in  the  open 
air,  is  largely  diffused  through  its  pages : 


72  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

..."  Hot  July  was  drawing  to  an  end, 
And  August  came  the  fainting  year  to  mend 

With  fruit  and  grain;  so  'neath  the  trellises, 
Nigh  blossomless,  did  they  lie  well  at  ease, 
And  watched  the  poppies  burn  across  the  grass, 

And  o'er  the  bindweed's  bells  the  brown  bee  pass, 
Still  murmuring  of  his  gains :  windless  and  bright 
The  morn  had  been,  to  help  their  dear  delight. 

.     .    .     Then  a  light  wind  arose 

That  shook  the  light  stems  of  that  flowery  close, 

And  made  men  sigh  for  pleasure." 

This  is  a  random  specimen.  As  you  read,  the 
fictitious  universe  of  the  poem  seems  to  expand  and 
advance  out  of  its  remoteness,  to  surge  musically 
about  your  senses,  and  merge  itself  utterly  in  the 
universe  which  surrounds  you.  The  summer 
brightness  of  the  real  world  goes  halfway  to  meet 
it;  and  the  beautiful  figures  which  throb  with  life 
in  Mr.  Morris's  stories  pass  lightly  to  and  fro  be 
tween  the  realm  of  poetry  and  the  mild  atmosphere 
of  fact.  This  quality  was  half  the  charm  of  the 
author's  former  poem,  The  Life  and  Death  of 
Jason,  published  last  summer.  We  seemed  really 
to  follow,  beneath  the  changing  sky,  the  fantastic 
boatload  of  wanderers  in  their  circuit  of  the  an 
cient  world.  For  people  compelled  to  stay  at  home, 
the  perusal  of  the  book  in  a  couple  of  mornings 
was  very  nearly  as  good  as  a  fortnight's  holiday. 
The  poem  appeared  to  reflect  so  clearly  and  forcibly 


THE  POETRY  OF  WILLIAM  MORRIS      73 

the  poet's  natural  sympathies  with  the  external 
world,  and  his  joy  in  personal  contact  with  it,  that 
the  reader  obtained  something  very  like  a  sense  of 
physical  transposition,  without  either  physical  or 
intellectual  weariness. 

This  ample  and  direct  presentment  of  the  joys 
of  action  and  locomotion  seems  to  us  to  impart  to 
these  two  works  a  truly  national  and  English  tone. 
They  taste  not  perhaps  of  the  English  soil,  but  of 
those  strong  English  sensibilities  which  the  great 
insular  race  carry  with  them  through  their  wander 
ings,  which  they  preserve  and  apply  with  such  en 
ergy  in  every  terrestrial  clime,  and  which  make 
them  such  incomparable  travellers.  We  heartily 
recommend  such  persons  as  have  a  desire  to  ac 
commodate  their  reading  to  the  season — as  are 
vexed  with  a  delicate  longing  to  place  themselves 
intellectually  in  relation  with  the  genius  of  the 
summer — to  take  this  Earthly  Paradise  with  them 
to  the  country. 

The  book  is  a  collection  of  tales  in  verse — found, 
without  exception,  we  take  it,  rather  than  imagined, 
and  linked  together,  somewhat  loosely,  by  a  narra 
tive  prologue.  The  following  is  the  "argument" 
of  the  prologue — already  often  enough  quoted,  but 
pretty  enough,  in  its  ingenious  prose,  to  quote 
again : — 

"Certain  gentlemen  and  mariners  of  Norway, 
having  considered  all  that  they  had  heard  of  the 


74  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

Earthly  Paradise,  set  sail  to  find  it,  and,  after 
many  troubles  and  the  lapse  of  many  years,  came 
old  men  to  some  western  land,  of  which  they  had 
never  before  heard :  there  they  died,  when  they  had 
dwelt  there  certain  years,  much  honoured  of  the 
strange  people." 

The  adventures  of  these  wanderers,  told  by  one 
of  their  number,  Kolf  the  Norseman,  born  at  By 
zantium — a  happy  origin  for  the  teller  of  a  heroic 
tale,  as  the  author  doubtless  felt — make,  to  begin 
with,  a  poem  of  considerable  length,  and  of  a  beauty 
superior  perhaps  to  that  of  the  succeeding  tales. 
An  admirable  romance  of  adventure  has  Mr.  Mor 
ris  unfolded  in  the  melodious  energy  of  this  half- 
hurrying,  half-lingering  narrative — a  romance  to 
make  old  hearts  beat  again  with  the  boyish  long 
ing  for  transmarine  mysteries,  and  to  plunge  boys 
themselves  into  a  delicious  agony  of  unrest. 

The  story  is  a  tragedy,  or  very  near  it — as  what 
story  of  the  search  for  an  Earthly  Paradise  could 
fail  to  be  ?  Fate  reserves  for  the  poor  storm-tossed 
adventurers  a  sort  of  fantastic  compromise  between 
their  actual  misery  and  their  ideal  bliss,  whereby  a 
kindly  warmth  is  infused  into  the  autumn  of  their 
days,  and  to  the  reader,  at  least,  a  very  tolerable 
Earthly  Paradise  is  laid  open.  The  elders  and 
civic  worthies  of  the  western  land  which  finally 
sheltered  them  summon  them  every  month  to  a 
feast,  where,  when  all  grosser  desires  have  been 


THE  POETRY  OF  WILLIAM  MORRIS      75 

duly  pacified,  the  company  sit  at  their  ease  and 
listen  to  the  recital  of  stories.  Mr.  Morris  gives  in 
this  volume  the  stories  of  the  six  midmonths  of 
the  year,  two  tales  being  allotted  to  each  month — 
one  from  the  Greek  Mythology,  and  one,  to  express 
it  broadly,  of  a  Gothic  quality.  He  announces  a 
second  series  in  which,  we  infer,  he  will  in  the 
same  manner  give  us  the  stories  rehearsed  at  the 
winter  fireside. 

The  Greek  stories  are  the  various  histories  of 
Atalanta,  of  Perseus,  of  Cupid  and  Psyche,  of  Al- 
cestis,  of  Atys,  the  hapless  son  of  Croesus,  and  of 
Pygmalion.  The  companion  pieces,  which  always 
serve  excellently  well  to  place  in  relief  the  perfect 
pagan  character  of  their  elder  mates,  deal  of  course 
with  elements  less  generally  known. 

" Atalanta 's  Race,"  the  first  of  Mr.  Morris's 
Greek  legends,  is  to  our  mind  almost  the  best. 
There  is  something  wonderfully  simple  and  child 
like  in  the  story,  and  the  author  has  given  it  ample 
dignity,  at  the  same  time  that  he  has  preserved  this 
quality. 

Most  vividly  does  he  present  the  mild  invin 
cibility  of  his  fleet-footed  heroine  and  the  half-boy 
ish  simplicity  of  her  demeanour — a  perfect  model 
of  a  belle  inhumaine.  But  the  most  beautiful  pas 
sage  in  the  poem  is  the  description  of  the  vigil  of 
the  love-sick  Milanion  in  the  lonely  sea-side  temple 
of  Venus.  The  author  has  conveyed  with  exquisite 


76  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

art  the  sense  of  devout  stillness  and  of  pagan  sanc 
tity  which  invests  this  remote  and  prayerful  spot. 
The  yellow  torch-light, 

"  Wherein  with  fluttering  gown  and  half -bared  limb 
The  temple  damsels  sung  their  evening  hymn;" 

the  sound  of  the  shallow  flowing  sea  without,  the 
young  man's  restless  sleep  on  the  pavement,  be 
sprinkled  with  the  ocean  spray,  the  apparition  of 
the  goddess  with  the  early  dawn,  bearing  the  gol 
den  apple — all  these  delicate  points  are  presented 
in  the  light  of  true  poetry. 

The  narrative  of  the  adventures  of  Danae  and 
of  Perseus  and  Andromeda  is,  with  the  exception 
of  the  tale  of  Cupid  and  Psyche  which  follows  it, 
the  longest  piece  in  the  volume.  Of  the  two,  we 
think  we  prefer  the  latter.  Unutterably  touching 
is  the  career  of  the  tender  and  helpless  Psyche,  and 
most  impressive  the  terrible  hostility  of  Venus. 
The  author,  we  think,  throughout  manages  this 
lady  extremely  well.  She  appears  to  us  in  a  sort 
of  rosy  dimness,  through  which  she  looms  as  for 
midable  as  she  is  beautiful,  and  gazing  with  "gen 
tle  eyes  and  unmoved  smiles/' 

"  Such  as  in  Cyprus,  the  fair  blossomed  isle, 
When  on  the  altar  in  the  summer  night 
They  pile  the  roses  up  for  her  delight, 
Men  see  within  their  hearts." 


THE  POETET  OF  WILLIAM  MORRIS     77 

"The  Love  of  Alcestis"  is  the  beautiful  story  of 
the  excellent  wife  who,  when  her  husband  was  ill, 
gave  up  her  life,  so  that  he  might  recover  and  live 
for  ever.  Half  the  interest  here,  however,  lies  in 
the  servitude  of  Apollo  in  disguise,  and  in  the 
touching  picture  of  the  radiant  god  doing  in  per 
fection  the  homely  work  of  his  office,  and  yet  from 
time  to  time  emitting  flashes,  as  it  were,  of  genius 
and  deity,  while  the  good  Admetus  observes  him 
half  in  kindness  and  half  in  awe. 

The  story  of  the  "Son  of  Croasus,"  the  poor 
young  man  who  is  slain  by  his  best  friend  because 
the  gods  had  foredoomed  it,  is  simple,  pathetic,  and 
brief.  The  finest  and  sweetest  poem  in  the  volume, 
to  our  taste,  is  the  tale  of  "Pygmalion  and  the 
Image."  The  merit  of  execution  is  perhaps 
not  appreciably  greater  here  than  in  the  other 
pieces,  but  the  legend  is  so  unutterably  charming 
that  it  claims  precedence  of  its  companions.  As 
beautiful  as  anything  in  all  our  later  poetry,  we 
think,  is  the  description  of  the  growth  and  domi 
nance  in  the  poor  sculptor's  heart  of  his  marvellous 
passion  for  the  stony  daughter  of  his  hands. 
Borne  along  on  the  steady,  changing  flow  of  his 
large  and  limpid  verse,  the  author  glides  into  the 
situation  with  an  ease  and  grace  and  fullness  of 
sympathy  worthy  of  a  great  master.  Here,  as 
elsewhere,  there  is  no  sign  of  effort  or  of  strain.  In 
spite  of  the  studied  and  recherche  character  of  his 


78  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

diction,  there  is  not  a  symptom  of  affectation  in 
thought  or  speech.  We  seem  in  this  tale  of  "Pyg 
malion  ' '  truly  to  inhabit  the  bright  and  silent  work 
room  of  a  great  Greek  artist,  and,  standing  among 
shapes  and  forms  of  perfect  beauty,  to  breathe  the 
incense-tainted  air  in  which  lovely  statues  were 
conceived  and  shining  stones  chiselled  into  immor 
tality. 

Mr.  Morris  is  indubitably  a  sensuous  poet,  to  his 
credit  be  it  said;  his  senses  are  constantly  proffer 
ing  their  testimony  and  crying  out  their  delight. 
But  while  they  take  their  freedom,  they  employ  it 
in  no  degree  to  their  own  debasement.  Just  as 
there  is  modesty  of  temperament  we  conceive  there 
is  modesty  of  imagination,  and  Mr.  Morris  possesses 
the  latter  distinction.  The  total  absence  of  it  is, 
doubtless,  the  long  and  short  of  Mr.  Swinburne's 
various  troubles.  We  may  imagine  Mr.  Swin 
burne  making  a  very  clever  poem  of  this  story 
of  "Pygmalion,"  but  we  cannot  fancy  him  making 
it  anything  less  than  utterly  disagreeable.  The 
thoroughly  agreeable  way  in  which  Mr.  Morris  tells 
it  is  what  especially  strikes  us.  We  feel  that  his 
imagination  is  equally  fearless  and  irreproachable, 
and  that  while  he  tells  us  what  we  may  call  a  sensu 
ous  story  in  all  its  breadth,  he  likewise  tells  it  in  all 
its  purity.  It  has,  doubtless,  an  impure  side;  but 
of  the  two  he  prefers  the  other.  While  Pygmalion 


THE  POETRY  OF  WILLIAM  MORRIS     79 

is  all  aglow  with  his  unanswered  passion,  he  one 
day  sits  down  before  his  image : 

"  And  at  the  last  drew  forth  a  book  of  rhymes, 
Wherein  were  writ  the  tales  of  many  climes, 
And  read  aloud  the  sweetness  hid  therein 
Of  lovers'  sorrows  and  their  tangled  sin." 

He  reads  aloud  to  his  marble  torment:  would  Mr. 
Swinburne  have  touched  that  note  ? 

We  have  left  ourselves  no  space  to  describe  in 
detail  the  other  series  of  tales — "The  Man  born  to 
be  King,"  "The  Proud  King,"  "The  Writing  on 
the  Image,"  "The  Lady  of  the  Land,"  "The 
Watching  of  the  Falcon,"  and  "Ogier  the  Dane." 

The  author  in  his  Jason  identified  himself  with 
the  successful  treatment  of  Greek  subjects  to  such 
a  degree  as  to  make  it  easy  to  suppose  that  these 
matters  were  the  specialty  of  his  genius.  But  in 
these  romantic  modern  stories  the  same  easy  power 
is  revealed,  the  same  admirable  union  of  natural 
gifts  and  cultivated  perceptions.  Mr.  Morris  is 
evidently  a  poet  in  the  broad  sense  of  the  word — 
a  singer  of  human  joys  and  sorrows,  whenever  and 
wherever  found.  His  somewhat  artificial  diction, 
which  would  seem  to  militate  against  our  claim 
that  his  genius  is  of  the  general  and  comprehensive 
order,  is,  we  imagine,  simply  an  achievement  of  his 
own.  It  is  not  imposed  from  without,  but  de- 


80  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

veloped  from  within.  Whatever  may  be  said  of  it, 
it  certainly  will  not  be  accused  of  being  unpoetical ; 
and  except  this  charge,  what  serious  one  can  be 
made? 

The  author's  style — according  to  our  impression 
— is  neither  Chaucerian,  Spenserian,  nor  imitative ; 
it  is  literary,  indeed,  but  it  has  a  freedom  and  ir 
regularity,  an  adaptability  to  the  movements  of  the 
author's  mind,  which  make  it  an  ample  vehicle  of 
poetical  utterance.  He  says  in  this  language  of  his 
own  the  most  various  and  the  most  truthful  things ; 
he  moves,  melts,  and  delights.  Such  at  least,  is  our 
own  experience.  Other  persons,  we  know,  find  it 
difficult  to  take  him  entirely  au  serieux.  But  we, 
taking  him — and  our  critical  duties  too — in  the 
most  serious  manner  our  mind  permits  of,  feel 
strongly  impelled,  both  by  gratitude  and  by  re 
flection,  to  pronounce  him  a  noble  and  delightful 
poet.  To  call  a  man  healthy  nowadays  is  almost 
an  insult — invalids  learn  so  many  secrets.  But  the 
health  of  the  intellect  is  often  promoted  by  physical 
disability.  We  say  therefore,  finally,  that  however 
the  faculty  may  have  been  promoted — with  the 
minimum  of  suffering,  we  certainly  hope — Mr. 
Morris  is  a  supremely  healthy  writer.  This  poem  is 
marked  by  all  that  is  broad  and  deep  in  nature,  and 
all  that  is  elevating,  profitable,  and  curious  in  art. 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD'S  ESSAYS 


A  review  of  Essays  in  Criticism.  By  Matthew  Arnold, 
Professor  of  Poetry  in  the  University  of  Oxford.  Boston: 
Ticknor  and  Fields.  1865.  Originally  published  in  North 
American  Review,  July,  1865. 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD'S  ESSAYS 

MR.  ARNOLD'S  Essays  in  Criticism  come  to 
American  readers  with  a  reputation  already 
made, — the  reputation  of  a  charming  style,  a  great 
deal  of  excellent  feeling,  and  an  almost  equal 
amount  of  questionable  reasoning.  It  is  for  us 
either  to  confirm  the  verdict  passed  in  the  author's 
own  country,  or  to  judge  his  work  afresh.  It  is 
often  the  fortune  of  English  writers  to  find  mitiga 
tion  of  sentence  in  the  United  States. 

The  Essays  contained  in  this  volume  are  on 
purely  literary  subjects;  which  is  for  us,  by  itself, 
a  strong  recommendation.  English  literature,  es 
pecially  contemporary  literature,  is,  compared  with 
that  of  France  and  Germany,  very  poor  in  collec 
tions  of  this  sort.  A  great  deal  of  criticism  is  writ 
ten,  but  little  of  it  is  kept ;  little  of  it  is  deemed  to 
contain  any  permanent  application.  Mr.  Arnold 
will  doubtless  find  in  this  fact — if  indeed  he  has  not 
already  signalized  it — but  another  proof  of  the  in 
feriority  of  the  English  to  the  Continental  school 
of  criticism,  and  point  to  it  as  a  baleful  effect  of 
the  narrow  practical  spirit  which  animates,  or,  as 
he  would  probably  say,  paralyzes,  the  former.  But 
83 


84  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

not  only  is  his  book  attractive  as  a  whole,  from  its 
exclusively  literary  character;  the  subject  of  each 
essay  is  moreover  particularly  interesting.  The 
first  paper  is  on  the  function  of  Criticism  at  the 
present  time;  a  question,  if  not  more  important, 
perhaps  more  directly  pertinent  here  than  in  Eng 
land.  The  second,  discussing  the  literary  influence 
of  Academies,  contains  a  great  deal  of  valuable  ob 
servation  and  reflection  in  a  small  compass  and  un 
der  an  inadequate  title.  The  other  essays  are  upon 
the  two  De  Guerins,  Heinrich  Heine,  Pagan  and 
Mediaeval  Religious  Sentiment,  Joubert,  Spinoza, 
and  Marcus  Aurelius.  The  first  two  articles  are, 
to  our  mind,  much  the  best;  the  next  in  order  of 
excellence  is  the  paper  on  Joubert ;  while  the  others, 
with  the  exception,  perhaps,  of  that  on  Spinoza,  are 
of  about  equal  merit. 

Mr.  Arnold's  style  has  been  praised  at  once  too 
much  and  too  little.  Its  resources  are  decidedly 
limited;  but  if  the  word  had  not  become  so  cheap, 
we  should  nevertheless  call  it  fascinating.  This 
quality  implies  no  especial  force;  it  rests  in  this 
case  on  the  fact  that,  whether  or  not  you  agree  with 
the  matter  beneath  it,  the  manner  inspires  you  with 
a  personal  affection  for  the  author.  It  expresses 
great  sensibility,  and  at  the  same  time  great  good 
nature;  it  indicates  a  mind  both  susceptible  and 
healthy.  With  the  former  element  alone  it  would 
savour  of  affectation;  with  the  latter,  it  would  be 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD'S  ESSAYS         85 

coarse.  As  it  stands,  it  represents  a  spirit  both 
sensitive  and  generous.  We  can  best  describe  it, 
perhaps,  by  the  word  sympathetic.  It  exhibits 
frankly,  and  without  detriment  to  its  national  char- 
;acter,  a  decided  French  influence.  /  Mr.  Arnold  is 
too  wise  to  attempt  to  write  French  English;  he 
probably  knows  that  a  language  can  only  be  indi 
rectly  enriched;  but  as  nationality  is  eminently  a 
matter  of  form,  he  knows  too  that  he  can  really  vio 
late  nothing  so  long  as  he  adheres  to  the  English 
letter. 

His  Preface  is  a  striking  example  of  the  intelli 
gent  amiability  which  animates  his  style.  His  two 
leading  Essays  were,  on  their  first  appearance, 
made  the  subject  of  much  violent  contention,  their 
moral  being  deemed  little  else  than  a  wholesale 
schooling  of  the  English  press  by  the  French  pro 
gramme.  Nothing  could  have  better  proved  the 
justice  of  Mr.  Arnold's  remarks  upon  the  "pro 
vincial"  character  of  the  English  critical  method 
than  the  reception  which  they  provoked.  He  now 
acknowledges  this  reception  in  a  short  introduction, 
which  admirably  reconciles  smoothness  of  temper 
with  sharpness  of  wit.  The  taste  of  this  perform 
ance  has  been  questioned ;  but  wherever  it  may  err, 
it  is  assuredly  not  in  being  provincial ;  it  is  essen 
tially  civil.  Mr.  Arnold's  amiability  is,  in  our  eye, 
a  strong  proof  of  his  wisdom.  If  he  were  a  few  de 
grees  more  short-sighted,  he  might  have  less  equa- 


86  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

nimity  at  his  command.  Those  who  sympathise  with 
him  warmly  will  probably  like  him  best  as  he  is; 
but  with  such  as  are  only  half  his  friends,  this  free 
dom  from  party  passion,  from  what  is  after  all  but 
a  lawful  professional  emotion,  will  argue  against 
his  sincerity. 

For  ourselves,  we  doubt  not  that  Mr.  Arnold  pos 
sesses  thoroughly  what  the  French  call  the  courage 
of  his  opinions.  When  you  lay  down  a  proposition 
which  is  forthwith  controverted,  it  is  of  course  op 
tional  with  you  to  take  up  the  cudgels  in  its  de 
fence.  If  you  are  deeply  convinced  of  its  truth, 
you  will  perhaps  be  content  to  leave  it  to  take  care 
of  itself;  or,  at  all  events,  you  will  not  go  out  of 
your  way  to  push  its  fortunes ;  for  you  will  reflect 
that  in  the  long  run  an  opinion  often  borrows 
credit  from  the  forbearance  of  its  patrons.  In  the 
long  run,  we  say;  it  will  meanwhile  cost  you  an 
occasional  pang  to  see  your  cherished  theory 
turned  into  a  football  by  the  critics.  A  football  is 
not,  as  such,  a  very  respectable  object,  and  the  more 
numerous  the  players,  the  more  ridiculous  it  be 
comes.  .Unless,  therefore,  you  are  very  confident 
of  your  ability  to  rescue  it  from  the  chaos  of  kicks, 
you  will  best  consult  its  interests  by  not  mingling 
in  the  game.  Such  has  been  Mr.  Arnold's  choice. 
His  opponents  say  that  he  is  too  much  of  a  poet  to 
be  a  critic ;  he  is  certainly  too  much  of  a  poet  to  be 
a  disputant.  In  the  Preface  in  question  he  has 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD'S  ESSAYS         87 

abstained  from  reiterating  any  of  the  views  put 
forth  in  the  two  offensive  Essays;  he  has  simply 
taken  a  delicate  literary  vengeance  upon  his  ad 
versaries. 

For  Mr.  Arnold 's  critical  feeling  and  observation, 
used  independently  of  his  judgment,  we  profess  a 
keen  relish.  He  has  these  qualities,  at  any  rate, 
of  a  good  critic,  whether  or  not  he  have  the  others, 
—the  science  and  the  logic.  It  is  hard  to  say 
whether  the  literary  critic  is  more  called  upon  to 
understand  or  to  feel.  It  is  certain  that  he  will 
accomplish  little  unless  he  can  feel  acutely;  al 
though  it  is  perhaps  equally  certain  that  he  will 
become  weak  the  moment  that  he  begins  to  * '  work, ' ' 
as  we  may  say,  his  natural  sensibilities.  The  best 
critic  is  probably  he  who  leaves  his  feelings  out  of 
account,  and  relies  upon  reason  for  success.  If 
he  actually  possesses  delicacy  of  feeling,  his  work 
will  be  delicate  without  detriment  to  its  solidity. 
The  complaint  of  Mr.  Arnold's  critics  is  that  his 
arguments  are  too  sentimental.  Whether  this  com 
plaint  is  well  founded,  we  shall  hereafter  inquire; 
let  us  determine  first  what  sentiment  has  done  for 
him.  It  has  given  him,  in  our  opinion,  his  great- 
est  charm  and  his  greatest  worth.  Hundreds  of 
other  critics  have  stronger  heads;  few,  in  Eng 
land  at  least,  have  more  delicate  perceptions.  We 
regret  that  we  have  not  the  space  to  confirm  this 
assertion  by  extracts.  We  must  refer  the  reader  to 


88  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

the  book  itself,  where  he  will  find  on  every  page  an 
illustration  of  our  meaning.  He  will  find  one, 
first  of  all,  in  the  apostrophe  to  the  University  of 
Oxford,  at  the  close  of  the  Preface, — "home  of  lost 
causes  and  forsaken  beliefs  and  unpopular  names 
and  impossible  loyalties."  This  is  doubtless  noth 
ing  but  sentiment,  but  it  seizes  a  shade  of  truth, 
and  conveys  it  with  a  directness  which  is  not  at 
the  command  of  logical  demonstration.  Such  a 
process  might  readily  prove,  with  the  aid  of  a  host 
of  facts,  that  the  University  is  actually  the  abode 
of  much  retarding  conservatism;  a  fine  critical 
instinct  alone,  and  the  measure  of  audacity  which 
accompanies  such  an  instinct,  could  succeed  in 
placing  her  on  the  side  of  progress  by  boldly  salut 
ing  her  as  the  Queen  of  Romance:  romance  being 
the  deadly  enemy  of  the  commonplace;  the  com 
monplace  being  the  fast  ally  of  Philistinism,  and 
Philistinism  the  heaviest  drag  upon  the  march  of 
civilisation. 

Mr.  Arnold  is  very  fond  of  quoting  Goethe's 
eulogy  upon  Schiller,  to  the  effect  that  his  friend's 
greatest  glory  was  to  have  left  so  far  behind  him 
was  uns  alle  bandigt,  das  Gemeine,  that  bane  of 
mankind,  the  common.  Exactly  how  much  the  in 
scrutable  Goethe  made  of  this  fact,  it  is  hard  at 
this  day  to  determine ;  but  it  will  seem  to  many 
readers  that  Mr.  Arnold  makes  too  much  of  it. 
Perhaps  he  does,  for  himself;  but  for  the  public 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD'S  ESSAYS         89 

in  general  he  decidedly  does  not.  One  of  the  chief 
duties  of  criticism  is  to  exalt  the  importance  of  the 
ideal;  and  Goethe's  speech  has  a  long  career  in 
prospect  before  we  can  say  with  the  vulgar  that 
it  is  "played  out."  Its  repeated  occurrence  in 
Mr.  Arnold's  pages  is  but  another  instance  of 
poetic  feeling  subserving  the  ends  of  criticism. 

The  famous  comment  upon  the  girl  Wragg,  over 
which  the  author's  opponents  made  so  merry,  we 
likewise  owe — we  do  not  hesitate  to  declare  it — 
to  this  same  poetic  feeling.  "Why  cast  discredit 
upon  so  valuable  an  instrument  of  truth?  Why 
not  wait  at  least  until  it  is  used  in  the  service  of 
error?  The  worst  that  can  be  said  of  the  para 
graph  in  question  is,  that  it  is  a  great  ado  about 
nothing.  All  thanks,  say  we,  to  the  critic  who 
will  pick  up  such  nothings  as  these ;  for  if  he  neg 
lects  them,  they  are  blindly  trodden  under  foot. 
They  may  not  be  especially  valuable,  but  they  are 
for  that  very  reason  the  critic's  particular  care. 
Great  truths  take  care  of  themselves;  great  truths 
are  carried  aloft  by  philosophers  and  poets;  the 
critic  deals  in  contributions  to  truth. 

Another  illustration  of  the  nicety  of  Mr. 
Arnold's  feeling  is  furnished  by  his  remarks  upon 
the  quality  of  distinction  as  exhibited  in  Maurice 
and  Eugenie  de  Guerin,  "that  quality  which  at  last 
inexorably  corrects  the  world's  blunders  and  fixes 
the  world's  ideals,  [which]  procures  that  the  popu- 


90  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

lar  poet  shall  not  pass  for  a  Pindar,  the  popular 
historian  for  a  Tacitus,  nor  the  popular  preacher 
for  a  Bossuet."  Another  is  offered  by  his  inci 
dental  remarks  upon  Coleridge,  in  the  article  on 
Joubert;  another,  by  the  remarkable  felicity  with 
which  he  has  translated  Maurice  de  Guerin's 
Centaur;  and  another,  by  the  whole  body  of  cita 
tions  with  which,  in  his  second  Essay,  he  fortifies 
his  proposition  that  the  establishment  in  England 
of  an  authority  answering  to  the  French  Academy 
would  have  arrested  certain  evil  tendencies  of 
English  literature, — for  to  nothing  more  offensive 
than  this,  as  far  as  we  can  see,  does  this  argument 
amount. 

In  the  first  and  most  important  of  his  Es 
says  Mr.  Arnold  puts  forth  his  views  upon  the 
actual  duty  of  criticism.  They  may  be  summed 
up  as  follows.  Criticism  has  no  concern  with  the 
practical;  its  function  is  simply  to  get  at  the  best 
thought  which  is  current, — to  see  things  in  them 
selves  as  they  are, — to  be  disinterested.  Criticism 
can  be  disinterested,  says  Mr.  Arnold, 

"  by  keeping  from  practice ;  by  resolutely  following  the 
law  of  its  own  nature,  which  is  to  be  a  free  play  of 
the  mind  on  all  subjects  which  it  touches,  by  steadily 
refusing  to  lend  itself  to  any  of  those  ulterior  political, 
practical  considerations  about  ideas  which  plenty  of 
people  will  be  sure  to  attach  to  them,  which  perhaps 
ought  often  to  be  attached  to  them,  which  in  this  coun- 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD'S  ESSAYS         91 

try,  at  any  rate,  are  certain  to  be  attached  to  them,  but 
which  criticism  has  really  nothing  to  do  with.  Its  busi 
ness  is  simply  to  know  the  best  that  is  known  and 
thought  in  the  world,  and,  by  in  its  turn  making  this 
known,  to  create  a  current  of  true  and  fresh  ideas.  Its 
business  is  to  do  this  with  inflexible  honesty,  with  due 
ability;  but  its  business  is  to  do  no  more,  and  to  leave 
alone  all  questions  of  practical  consequences  and  appli 
cations, —  questions  which  will  never  fail  to  have  due 
prominence  given  to  them." 

We  used  just  now  a  word  of  which  Mr.  Arnold 
is  very  fond, — a  word  of  which  the  general  reader 
may  require  an  explanation,  but  which,  when  ex 
plained,  he  will  be  likely  to  find  indispensable; 
we  mean  the  word  Philistine.  The  term  is  of 
German  origin,  and  has  no  English  synonyme. 
"At  Soli,"  remarks  Mr.  Arnold,  "I  imagined  they 
did  not  talk  of  solecisms;  and  here,  at  the  very 
head-quarters  of  Goliath,  nobody  talks  of  Phil 
istinism."  The  word  Spicier,  used  by  Mr.  Arnold 
as  a  French  synonyme,  is  not  so  good  as  bourgeois, 
and  to  those  who  know  that  bourgeois  means  a  citi 
zen,  and  who  reflect  that  a  citizen  is  a  person 
seriously  interested  in  the  maintenance  of  order, 
the  German  term  may  now  assume  a  more  special 
significance.  An  English  review  briefly  defines 
it  by  saying  that  "it  applies  to  the  fat-headed 
respectable  public  in  general."  This  definition 
must  satisfy  us  here.  The  Philistine  portion  of  the 


92  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

English  press,  by  which  we  mean  the  considerably 
larger  portion,  received  Mr.  Arnold's  novel  pro 
gramme  of  criticism  with  the  uncompromising 
disapprobation  which  was  to  be  expected  from  a 
literary  body,  the  principle  of  whose  influence,  or 
indeed  of  whose  being  is  its  subservience,  through 
its  various  members,  to  certain  political  and  re 
ligious  interests. 

Mr.  Arnold's  general  theory  was  offensive 
enough ;  but  the  conclusions  drawn  by  him  from  the 
fact  that  English  practice  has  been  so  long  and 
so  directly  at  variance  with  it,  were  such  as  to  ex 
cite  the  strongest  animosity.  Chief  among  these 
was  the  conclusion  that  this  fact  has  retarded  the 
development  and  vulgarised  the  character  of  the 
English  mind,  as  compared  with  the  French  and 
the  German  mind.  I  This  rational  inference  may 
be  nothing  but  a  poet's  flight;  but  for  ourselves, 
we  assent  to  it.  It  reaches  us  too.  The  facts 
collected  by  Mr.  Arnold  on  this  point  have  long 
wanted  a  voice.  It  has  long  seemed  to  us  that, 
as  a  nation,  the  English  are  singularly  incapable 
of  large,  of  high,  of  general  views.  They  are  in 
different  to  pure  truth,  to  la  verite  vraie.  Their 
views  are  almost  exclusively  practical,  and  it  is  in 
the  nature  of  practical  views  to  be  narrow.  They 
seldom  indeed  admit  a  fact  but  on  compulsion^; 
they  demand  of  an  idea  some  better  recommenda 
tion,  some  longer  pedigree,  than  that  it  is  true. 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD'S  ESSAYS         93 

That  this  lack  of  spontaneity  in  the  English  intel 
lect  is  caused  by  the  tendency  of  English  criticism, 
or  that  it  is  to  be  corrected  by  a  diversion,  or  even 
by  a  complete  reversion,  of  this  tendency,  neither 
Mr.  Arnold  nor  ourselves  suppose,  nor  do  we  look 
upon  such  a  result  as  desirable.  The  part  which 
Mr.  Arnold  assigns  to  his  reformed  method  of 
criticism  is  a  purely  tributary  part.  Its  indirect 
result  will  be  to  quicken  the  naturally  irrational  ac 
tion  of  the  English  mind ;  its  direct  result  will  be 
to  furnish  that  mind  with  a  larger  stock  of  ideas 
than  it  has  enjoyed  under  the  time-honoured 
regime  of  Whig  and  Tory,  High-Church  and  Low- 
Church  organs. 

We  may  here  remark,  that  Mr.  Arnold's  state 
ment  of  his  principles  is  open  to  some  misinterpreta 
tion, — an  accident  against  which  he  has,  perhaps, 
not  sufficiently  guarded  it.  For  many  persons  the 
word  practical  is  almost  identical  with  the  word 
useful,  against  which,  on  the  other  hand,  they  erect 
the  word  ornamental.  Persons  who  are  fond  of 
regarding  these  two  terms  as  irreconcilable,  will 
have  little  patience  with  Mr.  Arnold's  scheme  of 
criticism.  They  will  look  upon  it  as  an  organised 
preference  of  unprofitable  speculation  to  common 
sense.  But  the  great  beauty  of  the  critical  move 
ment  advocated  by  Mr.  Arnold  is  that  in  either  di 
rection  its  range  of  action  is  unlimited.  It  deals 
with  plain  facts  as  well  as  with  the  most  exalted 


94  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

fancies ;  but  it  deals  with  them  only  for  the  sake  of 
the  truth  which  is  in  them,  and  not  for  your  sake, 
reader,  and  that  of  your  party.  It  takes  high 

^  ground,  which  is  the  ground  of  theory.  It  does 
not  busy  itself  with  consequences,  which  are  all 
in  all  to  you.  Do  not  suppose  that  it  for  this 
reason  pretends  to  ignore  or  to  undervalue  conse 
quences;  on  the  contrary,  it  is  because  it  knows 
that  consequences  are  inevitable  that  it  leaves  them 
alone.  It  cannot  do  two  things  at  once;  it  cannot 
serve  two  masters.  Its  business  is  to  make  truth 

•-(•generally  accessible,  and  not  to  apply  it.  It  is  only 
on  condition  of  having  its  hands  free,  that  it  can 
make  truth  generally  accessible.  We  said  just  now 
that  its  duty  was,  among  other  things,  to  exalt,  if 
possible,  the  importance  of  the  ideal.  We  should 
perhaps  have  said  the  intellectual;  that  is,  of  the 
principle  of  understanding  things.  Its  business  is 
to  urge  the  claims  of  all  things  to  be  understood. 
If  this  is  its  function  in  England,  as  Mr.  Arnold 
represents,  it  seems  to  us  that  it  is  doubly  its  func 
tion  in  this  country.  Here  is  no  lack  of  votaries  of 
the  practical,  of  experimentalists,  of  empirics.  The 
tendencies  of  our  civilisation  are  certainly  not  such 
as  foster  a  preponderance  of  morbid  speculation. 
Our  national  genius  inclines  yearly  more  and  more 
to  resolve  itself  into  a  vast  machine  for  sifting,  in 
all  things,  the  wheat  from  the  chaff.  American  so 
ciety  is  so  shrewd,  that  we  may  safely  allow  it  to 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD'S  ESSAYS         95 

make  application  of  the  truths  of  the  study.  Only 
let  us  keep  it  supplied  with  the  truths  of  the 
study,  and  not  with  the  half-truths  of  the  forum. 
Let  criticism  take  the  stream  of  truth  at  its  source, 
and  then  practice  can  take  it  half-way  down. 
When  criticism  takes  it  half-way  down,  practice 
will  come  poorly  off. 

If  we  have  not  touched  upon  the  faults  of  Mr. 
Arnold's  volume,  it  is  because  they  are  faults  of 
detail,  and  because,  when,  as  a  whole,  a  book  com 
mands  our  assent,  we  do  not  incline  to  quarrel  with 
its  parts.  Some  of  the  parts  in  these  Essays  are 
weak,  others  are  strong;  but  the  impression  which 
they  all  combine  to  leave  is  one  of  such  beauty 
as  to  make  us  forget,  not  only  their  particular 
faults,  but  their  particular  merits.  If  we  were 
asked  what  is  the  particular  merit  of  a  given  es 
say,  we  should  reply  that  it  is  a  merit  much  less 
common  at  the  present  day  than  is  generally  sup 
posed, — the  merit  which  pre-eminently  character 
ises  Mr.  Arnold 's  poems,  the  merit,  namely,  of  hav 
ing  a  subject.  Each  essay  is  about  something.  If 
a  literary  work  now-a-days  start  with  a  certain 
topic,  that  is  all  that  is  required  of  it;  and  yet  it 
is  a  work  of  art  only  on  condition  of  ending  with 
that  topic,  on  condition  of  being  written,  not  from 
it,  but  to  it.  If  the  average  modern  essay  or  poem 
were  to  wear  its  title  at  the  close,  and  not  at  the 
beginning,  we  wonder  in  how  many  cases  the  reader 


96  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

would  fail  to  be  surprised  by  it.  A  book  or  an 
article  is  looked  upon  as  a  kind  of  Staubbach  water 
fall,  discharging  itself  into  infinite  space. 

If  we  were  questioned  as  to  the  merit  of  Mr. 
Arnold's  book  as  a  whole,  we  should  say  that  it 
lay  in  the  fact  that  the  author  takes  high  ground. 
The  manner  of  his  Essays  is  a  model  of  what 
criticisms  should  be.  The  foremost  English  critical 
journal,  the  Saturday  Review,  recently  disposed  of 
a  famous  writer  by  saying,  in  a  parenthesis,  that  he 
had  done  nothing  but  write  nonsense  all  his  life. 
Mr.  Arnold  does  not  pass  judgment  in  parenthesis. 
He  is  too  much  of  an  artist  to  use  leading  proposi 
tions  for  merely  literary  purposes.  The  conse 
quence  is,  that  he  says  a  few  things  in  such  a 
way  as  that  almost  in  spite  of  ourselves  we  remem 
ber  them,  instead  of  a  number  of  things  which  we 
cannot  for  the  life  of  us  remember.  There  are 
many  things  which  we  wish  he  had  said  better. 
It  is  to  be  regretted,  for  instance,  that,  when  Heine 
is  for  once  in  a  way  seriously  spoken  of,  he  should 
not  be  spoken  of  more  as  the  great  poet  which  he 
is,  and  which  even  in  New  England  he  will  one 
day  be  admitted  to  be,  than  with  reference  to  the 
great  moralist  which  he  is  not,  and  which  he  never 
claimed  to  be.  But  here,  as  in  other  places,  Mr. 
Arnold's  excellent  spirit  reconciles  us  with  his  short 
comings.  If  he  has  not  spoken  of  Heine  ex 
haustively,  he  has  at  all  events  spoken  of  him 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD'S  ESSAYS        97 

seriously,  which  for  an  Englishman  is  a  good  deal. 
Mr.  Arnold's  supreme  virtue  is  that  he  speaks 
of  all  things  seriously,  or,  in  other  words,  that  he 
is  not  offensively  clever.  The  writers  who  are  will 
ing  to  resign  themselves  to  this  obscure  distinction 
are  in  our  opinion  the  only  writers  who  under 
stand  their  time.  That  Mr.  Arnold  thoroughly  un 
derstands  his  time  we  do  not  mean  to  say,  for  this 
is  the  privilege  of  a  very  select  few;  but  he  is, 
at  any  rate,  profoundly  conscious  of  his  time. 
This  fact  was  clearly  apparent  in  his  poems,  and 
it  is  even  more  apparent  in  these  Essays.  It  gives 
them  a  peculiar  character  of  melancholy, — that 
melancholy  which  arises  from  the  spectacle  of  the 
old-fashioned  instinct  of  enthusiasm  in  conflict  (or 
at  all  events  in  contact)  with  the  modern  desire  to 
be  fair, — the  melancholy  of  an  age  which  not  only 
has  lost  its  naivete,  but  which  knows  it  has  lost  it. 


ME.  WALT  WHITMAN 


An  unsigned  review  of  Walt  Whitman's  Drum-Taps, 
New  York,  1865.  Originally  published  in  The  Nation, 
November  16,  1865. 

As  this  review  has  long  been  familiar  to  students  of 
Whitman,  and  its  authorship  quite  generally  known,  the 
original  title  has  been  retained  here. 


MR.  WALT  WHITMAN 

IT  has  been  a  melancholy  task  to  read  this  book ; 
and  it  is  a  still  more  melancholy  one  to  write 
about  it.  Perhaps  since  the  day  of  Mr.  Tupper's  Phi 
losophy  there  has  been  no  more  difficult  reading  of 
the  poetic  sort.  It  exhibits  the  effort  of  an  essentially 
prosaic  mind  to  lift  itself,  by  a  prolonged  muscular 
strain,  into  poetry.  Like  hundreds  of  other  good 
patriots,  during  the  last  four  years,  Mr.  Walt 
Whitman  has  imagined  that  a  certain  amount  of 
violent  sympathy  with  the  great  deeds  and  suffer 
ings  of  our  soldiers,  and  of  admiration  for  our 
national  energy,  together  with  a  ready  command  of 
picturesque  language,  are  sufficient  inspiration  for 
a  poet.  If  this  were  the  case,  we  had  been  a 
nation  of  poets.  The  constant  developments  of 
the  war  moved  us  continually  to  strong  feeling 
and  to  strong  expression  of  it.  But  in  those  cases 
in  which  these  expressions  were  written  out  and 
printed  with  all  due  regard  to  prosody,  they  failed 
to  make  poetry,  as  any  one  may  see  by  consulting 
now  in  cold  blood  the  back  volumes  of  the  Re 
bellion  Record. 

101 


102  ;  VIEWS-  AND  REVIEWS 

Of  course  the  city  of  Manhattan,  as  Mr.  Whit 
man  delights  to  call  it,  when  regiments  poured 
through  it  in  the  first  months  of  the  war,  and  its  own 
sole  god,  to  borrow  the  words  of  a  real  poet,  ceased 
for  a  while  to  be  the  millionaire,  was  a  noble  spec 
tacle,  and  a  poetical  statement  to  this  effect  is  pos 
sible.  Of  course  the  tumult  of  a  battle  is  grand,  the 
results  of  a  battle  tragic,  and  the  untimely  deaths  of 
young  men  a  theme  for  elegies.  But  he  is  not  a  poet 
who  merely  reiterates  these  plain  facts  ore  rotundo. 
He  only  sings  them  worthily  who  views  them  from  a 
height.  Every  tragic  event  collects  about  it  a 
number  of  persons  who  delight  to  dwell  upon  its 
superficial  points — of  minds  which  are  bullied  by 
the  accidents  of  the  affair.  The  temper  of  such 
minds  seems  to  us  to  be  the  reverse  of  the  poetic 
temper;  for  the  poet,  although  he  incidentally  mas 
ters,  grasps,  and  uses  the  superficial  traits  of  his 
theme,  is  really  a  poet  only  in  so  far  as  he  extracts 
its  latent  meaning  and  holds  it  up  to  common  eyes. 
And  yet  from  such  minds  most  of  our  war-verses 
have  come,  and  Mr.  Whitman's  utterances,  much 
as  the  assertion  may  surprise  his  friends,  are  in 
this  respect  no  exception  to  general  fashion.  They 
are  an  exception,  however,  in  that  they  openly  pre 
tend  to  be  something  better;  and  this  it  is  that 
makes  them  melancholy  reading. 

Mr.  Whitman  is  very  fond  of  blowing  his  own 
trumpet,  and  he  has  made  very  explicit  claims  for 


MR.  WALT  WHITMAN  103 

his  books.     "Shut  not  your  doors/'  he  exclaims 
at  the  outset — 

"  Shut  not  your  doors  to  me,  proud  libraries, 

For  that  which  was  lacking  among  you  all,  yet  needed 
most,  I  bring; 

A  book  I  have  made  for  your  dear  sake,  0  soldiers, 

And  for  you,  0  soul  of  man,  and  you,  love  of  com 
rades  ; 

The  words  of  my  book  nothing,  the  life  of  it  every 
thing; 

A  book  separate,  not  link'd  with  the  rest,  nor  felt  by 
the  intellect; 

But  you  will  feel  every  word,  0  Libertad!  arm'd 
Libertad ! 

It  shall  pass  by  the  intellect  to  swim  the  sea,  the  air, 
With  joy  with  you,  0  soul  of  man." 

These  are  great  pretensions,  but  it  seems  to   us 
that  the  following  are  even  greater: 

"  From  Paumanok  starting,  I  fly  like  a  bird, 

Around  and  around  to  soar,  to  sing  the  idea  of  all; 

To  the  north  betaking  myself,  to  sing  there  arctic 
songs, 

To  Kanada,  'till  I  absorb  Kanada  in  myself  —  to 
Michigan  then, 

To  Wisconsin,  Iowa,  Minnesota,  to  sing  their  songs 
(they  are  inimitable) ; 

Then  to  Ohio  and  Indiana,  to  sing  theirs  —  to  Mis 
souri  and  Kansas  and  Arkansas  to  sing  theirs, 

To  Tennessee  and  Kentucky  —  to  the  Carolinas  and 
Georgia,  to  sing  theirs, 


104  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

To  Texas,  and  so  along  up  toward  California,  to  roam 
accepted  everywhere; 

To  sing  first  (to  the  tap  of  the  war-drum,  if  need  be) 

The  idea  of  all  —  of  the  western  world,  one  and  in 
separable, 

And  then  the  song  of  each  member  of  these  States." 

Mr.  Whitman's  primary  purpose  is  to  celebrate 
the  greatness  of  our  armies;  his  secondary  purpose 
is  to  celebrate  the  greatness  of  the  city  of  New 
York.  He  pursues  these  objects  through  a  hun 
dred  pages  of  matter  which  remind  us  irresistibly 
of  the  story  of  the  college  professor  who,  on  a 
venturesome  youth  bringing  him  a  theme  done  in 
blank  verse,  reminded  him  that  it  was  not  cus 
tomary  in  writing  prose  to  begin  each  line  with 
a  capital.  The  frequent  capitals  are  the  only  marks 
of  verse  in  Mr.  Whitman's  writings.  There  is, 
fortunately,  but  one  attempt  at  rhyme.  We  say 
fortunately,  for  if  the  inequality  of  Mr.  Whit 
man's  lines  were  self -registering,  as  it  would  be  in 
the  case  of  an  anticipated  syllable  at  their  close, 
the  effect  would  be  painful  in  the  extreme.  As 
the  case  stands,  each  line  stands  off  by  itself,  in 
resolute  independence  of  its  companions,  without 
a  visible  goal.  ^ 

But  if  Mr.  Whitman  does  not  write  verse,  hej 
does  not  write  ordinary  prose.     The   reader  has 
seen  that  liberty  is  "libertad."     In  like  manner, 
comrade  is  "camerado";  Americans  are  "Ameri- 


MR.  WALT  WHITMAN  105 

canos";  a  pavement  is  a  "trottoir,"  and  Mr. 
Whitman  himself  is  a  "chansonnier."  If  there 
is  one  thing  that  Mr.  Whitman  is  not,  it  is  this, 
for  Beranger  was  a  chansonnier.  To  appreciate  the 
force  of  our  conjunction,  the  reader  should  com 
pare  his  military  lyrics  with  Mr.  Whitman's 
declamations.  Our  author's  novelty,  however,  is 
not  in  his  words,  but  in  the  form  of  his  writing. 
As  we  have  said,  it  begins  for  all  the  world  like 
verse  and  turns  out  to  be  arrant  prose.  It  is 
more  like  Mr.  Tupper's  proverbs  than  anything 
we  have  met. 

But  what  if,  in  form,  it  is  prose  ?  it  may  be  asked. 
Very  good  poetry  has  come  out  of  prose  before 
this.  To  this  we  would  reply  that  it  must  first 
have  gone  into  it.  Prose,  in  order  to  be  good 
poetry,  must  first  be  good  prose.  As  a  general 
principle,  we  know  of  no  circumstance  more  likely 
to  impugn  a  writer's  earnestness  than  the  adoption 
of  an  anomalous  style.  He  must  have  something 
very  original  to  say  if  none  of  the  old  vehicles 
will  carry  his  thoughts.  Of  course  he  may  be  sur 
prisingly  original.  Still,  presumption  is  against 
him.  If  on  examination  the  matter  of  his  discourse 
proves  very  valuable,  it  justifies,  or  at  any  rate 
excuses,  his  literary  innovation. 

But  if,  on  the  other  hand,  it  is  of  a  common 
quality,  with  nothing  new  about  it  but  its  man 
ners,  the  public  will  judge  the  writer  harshly.  The 


106  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

most  that  can  be  said  of  Mr.  Whitman's  vaticina 
tions  is,  that,  cast  in  a  fluent  and  familiar  manner, 
the  average  substance  of  them  might  escape  un 
challenged.  But  we  have  seen  that  Mr.  Whitman 
prides  himself  especially  on  the  substance — the  life 
— of  his  poetry.  It  may  be  rough,  it  may  be 
grim,  it  may  be  clumsy — such  we  take  to  be  the 
author's  argument — but  it  is  sincere,  it  is  sublime, 
it  appeals  to  the  soul  of  man,  it  is  the  voice  of  a 
people.  He  tells  us,  in  the  lines  quoted,  that  the 
words  of  his  book  are  nothing.  To  our  perception 
they  are  everything,  and  very  little  at  that. 

A  great  deal  of  verse  that  is  nothing  but  words 
has,  during  the  war,  been  sympathetically  sighed 
over  and  cut  out  of  newspaper  corners,  because  it 
has  possessed  a  certain  simple  melody.  But  Mr. 
Whitman's  verse,  we  are  confident,  would  have 
failed  even  of  this  triumph,  for  the  simple  reason 
that  no  triumph,  however  small,  is  won  but  through 
the  exercise  of  art,  and  that  this  volume  is  an 
offence  against  art.  It  is  not  enough  to  be  grim 
and  rough  and  careless ;  common  sense  is  also  neces 
sary,  for  it  is  by  common  sense  that  we  are  judged. 
There  exists  in  even  the  commonest  minds,  in 
literary  matters,  a  certain  precise  instinct  of  con 
servatism,  which  is  very  shrewd  in  detecting  wanton 
eccentricities. 

To  this  instinct  Mr.  Whitman's  attitude  seems 
monstrous.  It  is  monstrous  because  it  pretends 


MR.  WALT  WHITMAN  107 

to  persuade  the  soul  while  it  slights  the  intellect; 
because  it  pretends  to  gratify  the  feelings  while 
it  outrages  the  taste.  The  point  is  that  it  does 
this  on  theory,  wilfully,  consciously,  arrogantly. 
It  is  the  little  nursery  game  of  "open  your  mouth 
and  shut  your  eyes. ' '  Our  hearts  are  often  touched 
through  a  compromise  with  the  artistic  sense,  but 
never  in  direct  violation  of  it.  Mr.  Whitman  sits 
down  at  the  outset  and  counts  out  the  intelli 
gence.  This  were  indeed  a  wise  precaution  on  his 
part  if  the  intelligence  were  only  submissive !  But 
when  she  is  deliberately  insulted,  she  takes  her 
revenge  by  simply  standing  erect  and  open-eyed. 
This  is  assuredly  the  best  she  can  do.  And  if  she 
could  find  a  voice  she  would  probably  address  Mr. 
Whitman  as  follows: — 

"You  came  to  woo  my  sister,  the  human  soul. 
Instead  of  giving  me  a  kick  as  you  approach,  you 
should  either  greet  me  courteously,  or,  at  least, 
steal  in  unobserved.  But  now  you  have  me  on 
your  hands.  Your  chances  are  poor.  What  the 
human  heart  desires  above  all  is  sincerity,  and  you 
do  not  appear  to  me  sincere.  For  a  lover  you  talk 
entirely  too  much  about  yourself.  In  one  place  you 
threaten  to  absorb  Kanada.  In  another  you  call 
upon  the  city  of  New  York  to  incarnate  you,  as 
you  have  incarnated  it.  In  another  you  inform  us 
that  neither  youth  pertains  to  you  nor  '  delicatesse, ' 
that  you  are  awkward  in  the  parlour,  that  you  do 


108  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

not  dance,  and  that  you  have  neither  bearing, 
beauty,  knowledge,  nor  fortune.  In  another  place, 
by  an  allusion  to  your  'little  songs,'  you  seem  to 
identify  yourself  with  the  third  person  of  the 
Trinity. 

1  'For  a  poet  who  claims  to  sing  'the  idea  of  all,' 
this  is  tolerably  egotistical.  We  look  in  vain,  how 
ever,  through  your  book  for  a  single  idea.  We 
find  nothing  but  flashy  imitations  of  ideas.  We 
find  a  medley  of  extravagances  and  commonplaces. 
We  find  art,  measure,  grace,  sense  sneered  at  on 
every  page,  and  nothing  positive  given  us  in  their 
stead.  To  be  positive  one  must  have  something  to 
say ;  to  be  positive  requires  reason,  labour,  and  art ; 
and  art  requires,  above  all  things,  a  suppression  of 
one's  self,  a  subordination  of  one's  self  to  an  idea. 
This  will  never  do  for  you,  whose  plan  is  to  adapt 
the  scheme  of  the  universe  to  your  own  limitations. 
You  cannot  entertain  and  exhibit  ideas ;  but,  as  we 
have  seen,  you  are  prepared  to  incarnate  them. 
It  is  for  this  reason,  doubtless,  that  when  once  you 
have  planted  yourself  squarely  before  the  public, 
and  in  view  of  the  great  service  you  have  done  to 
the  ideal,  have  become,  as  you  say,  '  accepted  every 
where/  you  can  afford  to  deal  exclusively  in 
words.  What  would  be  bald  nonsense  and  dreary 
platitudes  in  any  one  else  becomes  sublimity  in  you. 

"But  all  this  is  a  mistake.  To  become  adopted 
as  a  national  poet,  it  is  not  enough  to  discard 


MR.  WALT  WHITMAN  109 

everything  in  particular  and  to  accept  everything 
in  general,  to  amass  crudity  upon  crudity,  to  dis 
charge  the  undigested  contents  of  your  blotting- 
book  into  the  lap  of  the  public.  You  must  respect 
the  public  which  you  address;  for  it  has  taste,  if 
you  have  not.  It  delights  in  the  grand,  the  heroic, 
and  the  masculine;  but  it  delights  to  see  these  con 
ceptions  cast  into  worthy  form.  It  is  indifferent 
to  brute  sublimity.  It  will  never  do  for  you  to 
thrust  your  hands  into  your  pockets  and  cry  out 
that,  as  the  research  of  form  is  an  intolerable  bore, 
the  shortest  and  most  economical  way  for  the  pub 
lic  to  embrace  its  idols — for  the  nation  to  realise  its 
genius — is  in  your  own  person. 

"This  democratic,  liberty-loving,  American  pop 
ulace,  this  stern  and  war-tried  people,  is  a  great 
civiliser.  It  is  devoted  to  refinement.  If  it  has 
sustained  a  monstrous  war,  and  practised  human 
nature's  best  in  so  many  ways  for  the  last  five 
years,  it  is  not  to  put  up  with  spurious  poetry 
afterwards.  To  sing  aright  our  battles  and  our 
glories  it  is  not  enough  to  have  served  in  a  hospital 
(however  praiseworthy  the  task  in  itself),  to  be 
aggressively  careless,  inelegant,  and  ignorant,  and 
to  be  constantly  preoccupied  with  yourself.  It  is 
not  enough  to  be  rude,  lugubrious,  and  grim.  You 
must  also  be  serious.  You  must  forget  yourself  in 
your  ideas.  Your  personal  qualities — the  vigour 
of  your  temperament,  the  manly  independence  of 


110  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

your  nature,  the  tenderness  of  your  heart — these 
facts  are  impertinent.  You  must  be  possessed,  and 
you  must  thrive  to  possess  your  possession.  If  in 
your  striving  you  break  into  divine  eloquence,  then 
you  are  a  poet.  If  the  idea  which  possesses  you  is 
the  idea  of  your  country's  greatness,  then  you  are 
a  national  poet ;  and  not  otherwise. ' ' 


THE  POETEY  OF  GEOEGE  ELIOT 


I.  A  review  of  The  Spanish  Gypsy.    A  Poem.     By  George 
Eliot.     Boston:      Ticknor     and     Fields.     1868.     Originally 
published  in  North  American  Review,  October,  1868. 

II.  A  review  of  The  Legend  of  Jubal,  and  other  Poems. 
By   George  Eliot.     Wm.   Blackwood  and   Sons:    Edinburgh 
and  London.     1874.     Originally  published  in  North  Amer 
ican  Review,  October,  1874. 


THE  POETRY  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT 

I.   THE  SPANISH  GYPSY 

I  KNOW  not  whether  George  Eliot  has  any 
enemies,  nor  why  she  should  have  any;  but 
if  perchance  she  has,  I  can  imagine  them  to  have 
hailed  the  announcement  of  a  poem  from  her  pen 
as  a  piece  of  particularly  good  news.  "Now, 
finally,"  I  fancy  them  saying,  "this  sadly  over 
rated  author  will  exhibit  all  the  weakness  that  is 
in  her;  now  she  will  prove  herself  what  we  have 
all  along  affirmed  her  to  be — not  a  serene,  self- 
directing  genius  of  the  first  order,  knowing  her 
powers  and  respecting  them,  and  content  to  leave 
well  enough  alone,  but  a  mere  showy  rhetorician, 
possessed  and  prompted,  not  by  the  humble  spirit 
of  truth,  but  by  an  insatiable  longing  for  ap 
plause.  "  Suppose  Mr.  Tennyson  were  to  come  out 
with  a  novel,  or  Madame  George  Sand  were  to  pro 
duce  a  tragedy  in  French  alexandrines.  The 
reader  will  agree  with  me,  that  these  are  hard  sup 
positions;  yet  the  world  has  seen  stranger  things, 
and  been  reconciled  to  them.  Nevertheless,  with 
the  best  possible  will  toward  our  illustrious  novel 
ist,  it  is  easy  to  put  ourselves  in  the  shoes  of  these 
113 


114  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

hypothetical  detractors.  No  one,  assuredly,  but 
George  Eliot  could  mar  George  Eliot's  reputation; 
but  there  was  room  for  the  fear  that  she  might  do 
it.  This  reputation  was  essentially  prose-built,  and 
in  the  attempt  to  insert  a  figment  of  verse  of  the 
magnitude  of  The  Spanish  Gypsy,  it  was  quite  pos 
sible  that  she  might  injure  its  fair  proportions. 

In  consulting  her  past  works,  for  approval  of 
their  hopes  and  their  fears,  I  think  both  her  friends 
and  her  foes  would  have  found  sufficient  ground 
for  their  arguments.  Of  all  our  English  prose- 
writers  of  the  present  day,  I  think  I  may  say,  that, 
as  a  writer  simply,  a  mistress  of  style,  I  have  been 
very  near  preferring  the  author  of  Silas  Marner 
and  of  Romola, — the  author,  too,  of  Felix  Holt. 
The  motive  of  my  great  regard  for  her  style  I 
take  to  have  been  that  I  fancied  it  such  perfect 
solid  prose.  Brilliant  and  lax  as  it  was  in  tissue, 
it  seemed  to  contain  very  few  of  the  silken  threads 
of  poetry;  it  lay  on  the  ground  like  a  carpet,  in 
stead  of  floating  in  the  air  like  a  banner.  If  my 
impression  was  correct,  The  Spanish  Gypsy  is  not 
a  genuine  poem.  And  yet,  looking  over  the  au 
thor's  novels  in  memory,  looking  them  over  in  the 
light  of  her  unexpected  assumption  of  the  poetical 
function,  I  find  it  hard  at  times  not  to  mistrust 
my  impression.  I  like  George  Eliot  well  enough, 
in  fact,  to  admit,  for  the  time,  that  I  might  have 
been  in  the  wrong.  If  I  had  liked  her  less,  if  I 


THE  POETRY  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT      115 

had  rated  lower  the  quality  of  her  prose,  I  should 
have  estimated  coldly  the  possibilities  of  her  verse. 
Of  course,  therefore,  if,  as  I  am  told  many  persons 
do  in  England,  who  consider  carpenters  and 
weavers  and  millers'  daughters  no  legitimate  sub 
ject  for  reputable  fiction,  I  had  denied  her  novels 
any  qualities  at  all,  I  should  have  made  haste,  on 
reading  the  announcement  of  her  poem,  to  speak 
of  her  as  the  world  speaks  of  a  lady,  who,  having 
reached  a  comfortable  middle  age,  with  her  shoul 
ders  decently  covered,  "for  reasons  deep  below  the 
reach  of  thought,"  (to  quote  our  author),  begins 
to  go  out  to  dinner  in  a  low-necked  dress  "of  the 
period,"  and  say  in  fine,  in  three  words,  that  she 
was  going  to  make  a  fool  of  herself. 

But  here,  meanwhile,  is  the  book  before  me,  to 
arrest  all  this  a  priori  argumentation.  Time 
enough  has  elapsed  since  its  appearance  for  most 
readers  to  have  uttered  their  opinions,  and  for 
the  general  verdict  of  criticism  to  have  been 
formed.  In  looking  over  several  of  the  published 
reviews,  I  am  struck  with  the  fact  that  those  imme 
diately  issued  are  full  of  the  warmest  delight  and 
approval,  and  that,  as  the  work  ceases  to  be  a  nov 
elty,  objections,  exceptions,  and  protests  multiply. 
This  is  quite  logical.  Not  only  does  it  take  a  much 
longer  time  than  the  reviewer  on  a  weekly  journal 
has  at  his  command  to  properly  appreciate  a  work 
of  the  importance  of  The  Spanish  Gypsy,  but  the 


116  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

poem  was  actually  much  more  of  a  poem  than  was 
to  be  expected.  The  foremost  feeling  of  many 
readers  must  have  been — it  was  certainly  my  own 
— that  we  had  hitherto  only  half  known  George 
Eliot.  Adding  this  dazzling  new  half  to  the  old 
one,  readers  constructed  for  the  moment  a  really 
splendid  literary  figure.  But  gradually  the  old 
half  began  to  absorb  the  new,  and  to  assimilate 
its  virtues  and  failings,  and  critics  finally  remem 
bered  that  the  cleverest  writer  in  the  world  is  after 
all  nothing  and  no  one  but  himself. 

The  most  striking  quality  in  The  Spanish  Gypsy, 
on  a  first  reading,  I  think,  is  its  extraordinary 
rhetorical  energy  and  elegance.  The  richness  of 
the  author's  style  in  her  novels  gives  but  an  inade 
quate  idea  of  the  splendid  generosity  of  diction 
displayed  in  the  poem.  She  is  so  much  of  a  thinker 
and  an  observer  that  she  draws  very  heavily  on  her 
powers  of  expression,  and  one  may  certainly  say 
that  they  not  only  never  fail  her,  but  that  verbal 
utterance  almost  always  bestows  upon  her  ideas  a 
peculiar  beauty  and  fullness,  apart  from  their  sig 
nificance.  The  result  produced  in  this  manner, 
the  reader  will  see,  may  come  very  near  being 
poetry;  it  is  assuredly  eloquence.  The  faults  in 
the  present  work  are  very  seldom  faults  of  weak 
ness,  except  in  so  far  as  it  is  weak  to  lack  an  abso 
lute  mastery  of  one's  powers;  they  arise  rather 
from  an  excess  of  rhetorical  energy,  from  a  desire 


THE  POETRY  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT      117 

to  attain  to  perfect  fullness  and  roundness  of  utter 
ance;  they  are  faults  of  overstatement.  It  is  by 
no  means  uncommon  to  find  a  really  fine  passage 
injured  by  the  addition  of  a  clause  which  dilutes 
the  idea  under  pretence  of  completing  it.  The 
poem  opens,  for  instance,  with  a  description  of 

"  Broad-breasted  Spain,  leaning  with  equal  love 
(A  calm  earth-goddess  crowned  with  corn  and  vines) 
On  the  Mid  Sea  that  moans  with  memories, 
And  on  the  untravelled  Ocean,  whose  vast  tides 
Pant  dumbly  passionate  with  dreams  of  youth." 

The  second  half  of  the  fourth  line  and  the  fifth, 
here,  seem  to  me  as  poor  as  the  others  are  good. 
So  in  the  midst  of  the  admirable  description  of 
Don  Silva,  which  precedes  the  first  scene  in  the 
castle : — 

"  A  spirit  framed 

Too  proudly  special  for  obedience, 
Too  subtly  pondering  for  mastery: 
Born  of  a  goddess  with  a  mortal  sire, 
Heir  of  flesh-fettered,  weak  divinity, 
Doom-gifted  with  long  resonant  consciousness 

And  perilous  heightening  of  the  sentient  soul." 

i 

The  transition  to  the  lines  in  Italic  is  like  the  pas 
sage  from  a  well-ventilated  room  into  a  vacuum. 
On  reflection,  we  see  '  '  long  resonant  consciousness '  ' 
to  be  a  very  good  term;  but,  as  it  stands,  it  cer 
tainly  lacks  breathing-space.  On  the  other  hand, 


118  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

there  are  more  than  enough  passages  of  the  char 
acter  of  the  following  to  support  what  I  have  said 
of  the  genuine  splendour  of  the  style : — 

"  I  was  right ! 

These  gems  have  life  in  them:  their  colours  speak, 
Say  what  words  fail  of.     So  do  many  things, — 
The  scent  of  jasmine  and  the  fountain's  plash, 
The  moving  shadows  on  the  far-off  hills, 
The  slanting  moonlight  and  our  clasping  hands. 

0  Silva,  there's  an  ocean  round  our  words, 
That  overflows  and  drowns  them.    Do  you  know. 
Sometimes  when  we  sit  silent,  and  the  air 
Breathes  gently  on  us  from  the  orange-trees, 

It  seems  that  with  the  whisper  of  a  word 

Our  souls  must  shrink,  get  poorer,  more  apart? 

Is  it  not  true? 

DON  SILVA. 

Yes,  dearest,  it  is  true. 
Speech  is  but  broken  light  upon  the  depth 
Of  the  unspoken :  even  your  loved  words 
Float  in  the  larger  meaning  of  your  voice 
As  something  dimmer." 

1  may  say  in  general,  that  the  author's  admirers 
must  have  found  in  The  Spanish  Gypsy  a  present 
ment   of  her  various  special   gifts  stronger  and 
fuller,  on  the  whole,  than  any  to  be  found  in  her 
novels.     Those   who    valued   her   chiefly    for   her 
humour — the    gentle    humour    which    provokes    a 


THE  POETRY  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT      119 

smile,  but  deprecates  a  laugh — will  recognise  that 
delightful  gift  in  Blasco,  and  Lorenzo,  and  Roldan, 
and  Juan, — slighter  in  quantity  than  in  her  prose- 
writings,  but  quite  equal,  I  think,  in  quality. 
Those  who  prize  most  her  descriptive  powers  will 
see  them  wondrously  well  embodied  in  these  pages. 
As  for  those  who  have  felt  compelled  to  declare 
that  she  possesses  the  Shakespearian  touch,  they 
must  consent,  with  what  grace  they  may,  to  be  dis 
appointed.  I  have  never  thought  our  author  a 
great  dramatist,  nor  even  a  particularly  dramatic 
writer.  A  real  dramatist,  I  imagine,  could  never 
have  reconciled  himself  to  the  odd  mixture  of  the 
narrative  and  dramatic  forms  by  which  the  present 
work  is  distinguished;  and  that  George  Eliot's 
genius  should  have  needed  to  work  under  these 
conditions  seems  to  me  strong  evidence  of  the  par 
tial  and  incomplete  character  of  her  dramatic  in 
stincts.  An  English  critic  lately  described  her, 
with  much  correctness,  as  a  critic  rather  than  a 
creator  of  characters.  She  puts  her  figures  into 
action  very  successfully,  but  on  the  whole  she  thinks 
for  them  more  than  they  think  for  themselves. 
She  thinks,  however,  to  wonderfully  good  purpose. 
In  none  of  her  works  are  there  two  more  distinctly 
human  representations  than  the  characters  of  Silva 
and  Juan.  The  latter,  indeed,  if  I  am  not  mis 
taken,  ranks  with  Tito  Melema  and  Hetty  Sorrel, 
as  one  of  her  very  best  conceptions. 


120  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

What  is  commonly  called  George  Eliot 's  humour 
consists  largely,  I  think,  in  a  certain  tendency  to 
epigram  and  compactness  of  utterance, — not  the 
short-clipped,  biting,  ironical  epigram,  but  a  form 
of  statement  in  which  a  liberal  dose  of  truth  is 
embraced  in  terms  none  the  less  comprehensive  for 
being  very  firm  and  vivid.  'Juan  says  of  Zarca 
that 

"  He  is  one  of  those 

Who  steal  the  keys  from  snoring  Destiny, 

And  make  the  prophets  He." 

Zarca  himself,  speaking  of  "the  steadfast  mind, 
the  undivided  will  to  seek  the  good/'  says  most 
admirably, — 

a>Tis  that  compels  the  elements,  and  wrings 
A  human  music  from  the  indifferent  air" 

When  the  Prior  pronounces  Fedalma's  blood 
"unchristian  as  the  leopard's,"  Don  Silva  retorts 
with, — 

"  Unchristian  as  the  Blessed  Virgin's  blood, 
Before  the  angel  spoke  the  word,  '  All  hail ! ' 9 

Zarca,  qualifies  his  daughter's  wish  to  maintain 
her  faith  to  her  lover,  at  the  same  time  that  she 
embraces  her  father's  fortunes,  as 

"  A  woman's  dream, —  who  thinks  by  smiling  well 
To  ripen  figs  in  frost." 


THE  POETRY  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT      121 

This  happy  brevity  of  expression  is  frequently 
revealed  in  those  rich  descriptive  passages  and 
touches  in  which  the  work  abounds.  Some  of  the 
lines  taken  singly  are  excellent : — 

"  And  bells  make  Catholic  the  trembling  air  " ; 

and, 

"  Sad  as  the  twilight,  all  his  clothes  ill-girt"; 

and  again 

"Mournful  professor  of  high  drollery." 

Here  is  a  very  good  line  and  a  half : — 

"  The  old  rain-fretted  mountains  in  their  robes 
Of  shadow-broken  gray." 

Here,  finally,  are  three  admirable  pictures: — 

"  The  stars  thin-scattered  made  the  heavens  large, 
Bending  in  slow  procession;  in  the  east, 
Emergent  from  the  dark  waves  of  the  hills, 
Seeming  a  little  sister  of  the  moon, 
Glowed  Venus  all  unquenched." 

"  Spring  afternoons,  when  delicate  shadows  fall 
Pencilled  upon  the  grass;  high  summer  morns, 

"  When  white  light  rains  upon  the  quiet  sea, 
And  cornfields  flush  for  ripeness." 

"  Scent  the  fresh  breath  of  the  height-loving  herbs, 
That,  trodden  by   the  pretty  parted  hoofs 


122  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

Of  nimble  goats,  sigh  at  the  innocent  bruise, 
And  with  a  mingled  difference  exquisite 
Pour  a  sweet  burden  on  the  buoyant  air." 

But  now  to  reach  the  real  substance  of  the  poem, 
and  to  allow  the  reader  to  appreciate  the  author's 
treatment  of  human  character  and  passion,  I  must 
speak  briefly  of  the  story.  I  shall  hardly  misrep 
resent  it,  when  I  say  that  it  is  a  very  old  one,  and 
that  it  illustrates  that  very  common  occurrence  in 
human  affairs, — the  conflict  of  love  and  duty. 
Such,  at  least,  is  the  general  impression  made  by 
the  poem  as  it  stands.  It  is  very  possible  that  the 
author's  primary  intention  may  have  had  a  breadth 
which  has  been  curtailed  in  the  execution  of  the 
work, — that  it  was  her  wish  to  present  a  struggle 
between  nature  and  culture,  between  education  and 
the  instinct  of  race.  You  can  detect  in  such  a 
theme  the  stuff  of  a  very  good  drama, — a  some 
what  stouter  stuff,  however,  than  The  Spanish 
Gypsy  is  made  of.  George  Eliot,  true  to  that  di 
dactic  tendency  for  which  she  has  hitherto  been  re 
markable,  has  preferred  to  make  her  heroine's  pre 
dicament  a  problem  in  morals,  and  has  thereby,  I 
think,  given  herself  hard  work  to  reach  a  satisfac 
tory  solution.  She  has,  indeed,  committed  herself 
to  a  signal  error,  in  a  psychological  sense, — that 
of  making  a  Gypsy  girl  with  a  conscience.  Either 
Fedalma  was  a  perfect  Zincala  in  temper  and  in- 


THE  POETRY  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT      123 

stinct, — in  which  case  her  adhesion  to  her  father 
and  her  race  was  a  blind,  passionate,  sensuous 
movement,  which  is  almost  expressly  contradicted, 
—or  else  she  was  a  pure  and  intelligent  Catholic, 
in  which  case  nothing  in  the  nature  of  a  struggle 
can  be  predicated.  The  character  of  Fedalma,  I 
may  say,  comes  very  near  being  a  failure, — a  very 
beautiful  one ;  but  in  point  of  fact  it  misses  it. 

It  misses  it,  I  think,  thanks  to  that  circumstance 
which  in  reading  and  criticising  The  Spanish 
Gypsy  we  must  not  cease  to  bear  in  mind,  the  fact 
that  the  work  is  emphatically  a  romance.  We  may 
contest  its  being  a  poem,  but  we  must  admit  that 
it  is  a  romance  in  the  fullest  sense  of  the  word. 
Whether  the  term  may  be  absolutely  defined  I  know 
not;  but  we  may  say  of  it,  comparing  it  with  the 
novel,  that  it  carries  much  farther  that  compromise 
with  reality  which  is  the  basis  of  all  imaginative 
writing.  In  the  romance  this  principle  of  compro 
mise  pervades  the  superstructure  as  well  as  the 
basis.  The  most  that  we  exact  is  that  the  fable  be 
consistent  with  itself.  Fedalma  is  not  a  real 
Gypsy  maiden.  The  conviction  is  strong  in  the 
reader's  mind  that  a  genuine  Spanish  Zincala 
would  have  somehow  contrived  both  to  follow  her 
tribe  and  to  keep  her  lover.  If  Fedalma  is  not 
real,  Zarca  is  even  less  so.  He  is  interesting,  im 
posing,  picturesque;  but  he  is  very  far,  I  take  it, 
from  being  a  genuine  Gypsy  chieftain.  They  are 


124  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

both  ideal  figures, — the  offspring  of  a  strong  men 
tal  desire  for  creatures  well  rounded  in  their  ele 
vation  and  heroism, — creatures  who  should  illus 
trate  the  nobleness  of  human  nature  divorced  from 
its  smallness.  Don  Silva  has  decidedly  more  of 
the  common  stuff  of  human  feeling,  more  charm 
ing  natural  passion  and  weakness.  But  he,  too, 
is  largely  a  vision  of  the  intellect ;  his  constitution 
is  adapted  to  the  atmosphere  and  the  climate  of  ro 
mance.  Juan,  indeed,  has  one  foot  well  planted  on 
the  lower  earth ;  but  Juan  is  only  an  accessory  fig 
ure.  I  have  said  enough  to  lead  the  reader  to  per 
ceive  that  the  poem  should  not  be  regarded  as  a 
rigid  transcript  of  actual  or  possible  fact, — that 
the  action  goes  on  in  an  artificial  world,  and  that 
properly  to  comprehend  it  he  must  regard  it  with  a 
generous  mind. 

Viewed  in  this  manner,  as  efficient  figures  in  an 
essentially  ideal  and  romantic  drama,  Fedalma  and 
Zarca  seem  to  gain  vastly,  and  to  shine  with  a  bril 
liant  radiance.  If  we  reduce  Fedalma  to  the  level 
of  the  heroines  of  our  modern  novels,  in  which  the 
interest  aroused  by  a  young  girl  is  in  proportion  to 
the  similarity  of  her  circumstances  to  those  of  the 
reader,  and  in  which  none  but  the  commonest  feel 
ings  are  required,  provided  they  be  expressed  with 
energy,  we  shall  be  tempted  to  call  her  a  solemn 
and  cold-blooded  jilt.  In  a  novel  it  would  have 
been  next  to  impossible  for  the  author  to  make  the 


THE  POETRY  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT      125 

heroine  renounce  her  lover.  In  novels  we  not  only 
forgive  that  weakness  which  is  common  and  fa 
miliar  and  human,  but  we  actually  demand  it. 
But  in  poetry,  although  we  are  compelled  to  ad 
here  to  the  few  elementary  passions  of  our  nature, 
we  do  our  best  to  dress  them  in  a  new  and  ex 
quisite  garb.  Men  and  women  in  a  poetical  drama 
are  nothing,  if  not  distinguished. 

"  Our  dear  young  love, —  its  breath  was  happiness ! 
But  it  had  grown  upon  a  larger  life, 
Which  tore  its  roots  asunder." 

These  words  are  uttered  by  Fedalma  at  the  close 
of  the  poem,  and  in  them  she  emphatically  claims 
the  distinction  of  having  her  own  private  interests 
invaded  by  those  of  a  people.  The  manner  of  her 
kinship  with  the  Zincali  is  in  fact  a  very  much 
"larger  life"  than  her  marriage  with  Don  Silva. 
We  may,  indeed,  challenge  the  probability  of  her 
relationship  to  her  tribe  impressing  her  mind  with 
a  force  equal  to  that  of  her  love, — her  "dear  young 
love."  We  may  declare  that  this  is  an  unnatural 
and  violent  result.  For  my  part,  I  think  it  is  very 
far  from  violent;  I  think  the  author  has  employed 
her  art  in  reducing  the  apparently  arbitrary  qual 
ity  of  her  preference  for  her  tribe.  I  say  reduc 
ing  ;  I  do  not  say  effacing ;  because  it  seems  to  me, 
as  I  have  intimated,  that  just  at  this  point  her 
art  has  been  wanting,  and  we  are  not  sufficiently 


126  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

prepared  for  Fedalma's  movement  by  a  sense  of 
her  Gypsy  temper  and  instincts.  Still,  we  are  in 
some  degree  prepared  for  it  by  various  passages 
in  the  opening  scenes  of  the  book, — by  all  the  mag 
nificent  description  of  her  dance  in  the  Plaza : — 

"All  gathering  influences  culminate 
And  urge  Fedalma.     Earth  and  heaven  seem  one, 
Life  a  glad  trembling  on  the  outer  edge 
Of  unknown  rapture.     Swifter  now  she  moves, 
Filling  the  measure  with  a  double  beat 
And  widening  circle;  now  she  seems  to  glow 
With  more  declared  presence,  glorified. 
Circling,  she  lightly  bends,  and  lifts  on  high 
The  multitudinous-sounding  tambourine, 
And  makes  it  ring  and  boom,  then  lifts  it  higher, 
Stretching  her  left  arm  beauteous." 

•v 

We  are  better  prepared  for  it,  however,  than  by 
anything  else,  by  the  whole  impression  we  receive 
of  the  exquisite  refinement  and  elevation  of  the 
young  girl's  mind, — by  all  that  makes  her  so  bad 
a  Gypsy.  She  possesses  evidently  a  very  high- 
strung  intellect,  and  her  whole  conduct  is  in  a 
higher  key,  as  I  may  say,  than  that  of  ordinary 
women,  or  even  ordinary  heroines.  She  is  natural, 
I  think,  in  a  poetical  sense.  She  is  consistent  with 
her  own  prodigiously  superfine  character.  From 
a  lower  point  of  view  than  that  of  the  author,  she 
lacks  several  of  the  desirable  feminine  qualities, — 
a  certain  womanly  warmth  and  petulance,  a  grace- 


THE  POETRY  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT      127 

ful  irrationality.  Her  mind  is  very  much  too  lu 
cid,  and  her  aspirations  too  lofty.  Her  conscience, 
especially,  is  decidedly  over-active.  But  this  is  a 
distinction  which  she  shares  with  all  the  author's 
heroines, — Dinah  Morris,  Maggie  Tulliver,  Romola, 
and'  Esther  Lyon, — a  distinction,  moreover,  for 
which  I  should  be  very  sorry  to  hold  George  Eliot 
to  account.  There  are  most  assuredly  women  and 
women.  While  Messrs.  Charles  Reade  and  Wilkie 
Collins,  and  Miss  Braddon  and  her  school,  tell  one 
half  the  story,  it  is  no  more  than  fair  that  the  au 
thor  of  The  Spanish  Gypsy  should,  all  unassisted, 
attempt  to  relate  the  other.  „ 

Whenever  a  story  really  interests  one,  he  is  very 
fond  of  paying  it  the  compliment  of  imagining  it 
otherwise  constructed,  and  of  capping  it  with  a 
different  termination.  In  the  present  case^  one  is 
irresistibly  tempted  to  fancy  The  Spanish  Gypsy 
in  prose, — a  compact,  regular  drama:  not  in 
George  Eliot's  prose,  however:  in  a  diction  much 
more  nervous  and  heated  and  rapid,  written  with 
short  speeches  as  well  as  long.  (The  reader  will 
have  observed  the  want  of  brevity,  retort,  inter 
ruption,  rapid  alternation,  in  the  dialogue  of  the 
poem.  The  characters  all  talk,  as  it  were,  stand 
ing  still.) )  In  such  a  play  as  the  one  indicated  one 
imagines  a  truly  dramatic  Fedalma, — a  passionate, 
sensuous,  irrational  Bohemian,  as  elegant  as  good 
breeding  and  native  good  taste  could  make  her, 


128  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

and  as  pure  as  her  actual  sister  in  the  poem, — but 
rushing  into  her  father's  arms  with  a  cry  of  joy, 
and  losing  the  sense  of  her  lover's  sorrow  in  what 
the  author  has  elsewhere  described  as  "the  hur 
rying  ardour  of  action."  Or  in  the  way  of  a  dif 
ferent  termination,  suppose  that  Fedalma  should 
for  the  time  value  at  once  her  own  love  and  her 
lover's  enough  to  make  her  prefer  the  letter's  des 
tiny  to  that  represented  by  her  father.  Imagine, 
then,  that,  after  marriage,  the  Gypsy  blood  and 
nature  should  begin  to  flow  and  throb  in  quicker 
pulsations, — and  that  the  poor  girl  should  sadly 
contrast  the  sunny  freedom  and  lawless  joy  of  her 
people's  lot  with  the  splendid  rigidity  and  formal 
ism  of  her  own.  You  may  conceive  at  this  point 
that  she  should  pass  from  sadness  to  despair,  and 
from  despair  to  revolt.  Here  the  catastrophe  may 
occur  in  a  dozen  different  ways.  Fedalma  may  die 
before  her  husband's  eyes,  of  unsatisfied  longing 
for  the  fate  she  has  rejected ;  or  she  may  make  an 
attempt  actually  to  recover  her  fate,  by  wandering 
off  and  seeking  out  her  people.  The  cultivated 
mind,  however,  it  seems  to  me,  imperiously  de 
mands,  that,  on  finally  overtaking  them,  she  shall 
die  of  mingled  weariness  and  shame,  as  neither  a 
good  Gypsy  nor  a  good  Christian,  but  simply  a 
good  figure  for  a  tragedy.  But  there  is  a  degree 
of  levity  which  almost  amounts  to  irreverence  in 


THE  POETRY  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT      129 

fancying  this  admirable  performance  as  anything 
other  than  it  is. 

;  After  Fedalma  comes  Zarca,  and  here  our  imagi- 
'  nation  flags.  Not  so  George  Eliot's:  for  as  simple 
imagination,  I  think  that  in  the  conception  of  this 
impressive  and  unreal  figure  it  appears  decidedly 
at  its  strongest.  With  Zarca,  we  stand  at  the  very 
heart  of  the  realm  of  romance.  There  is  a  truly 
grand  simplicity,  to  my  mind,  in  the  outline  of  his 
character,  and  a  remarkable  air  of  majesty  in  his 
poise  and  attitude.  He  is  a  pere  noble  in  perfec 
tion.  His  speeches  have  an  exquisite  eloquence. 
In  strictness,  he  is  to  the  last  degree  unreal,  il 
logical,  and  rhetorical ;  but  a  certain  dramatic  unity 
is  diffused  through  his  character  by  the  depth  and 
energy  of  the  colours  in  which  he  is  painted.  With 
a  little  less  simplicity,  his  figure  would  be  decidedly 
modern.  As  it  stands,  it  is  neither  modern  nor 
mediaeval;  it  belongs  to  the  world  of  intellectual 
dreams  and  visions.  The  reader  will  admit  that  it 
is  a  vision  of  no  small  beauty,  the  conception  of  a 
stalwart  chieftain  who  distils  the  cold  exaltation  of 
his  purpose  from  the  utter  loneliness  and  obloquy 
of  his  race : — 

"  Wanderers  whom  no  God  took  knowledge  of, 
To  give  them  laws,  to  fight  for  them,  or  blight 
Another  race  to  make  them  ampler  room; 
A  people  with  no  home  even  in  memory, 


130  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

No  dimmest  lore  of  giant  ancestors 

To  make  a  common  hearth  for  piety"; 

a  people  all  ignorant  of 

"  The  rich  heritage,  the  milder  life, 
Of  nations  fathered  by  a  mighty  Past." 

Like  Don  Silva,  like  Juan,  like  Sephardo,  Zarca 
is  decidedly  a  man  of  intellect. 

Better  than  Fedalma  or  than  Zarca  is  the  re 
markably  beautiful  and  elaborate  portrait  of  Don 
Silva,  in  whom  the  author  has  wished  to  present  a 
young  nobleman  as  splendid  in  person  and  in  soul 
as  the  dawning  splendour  of  his  native  country. 
In  the  composition  of  his  figure,  the  real  and  the 
romantic,  brilliancy  and  pathos,  are  equally  com 
mingled.  He  cannot  be  said  to  stand  out  in  vivid 
relief.  As  a  piece  of  painting,  there  is  nothing 
commanding,  aggressive,  brutal,  as  I  may  say,  in 
his  lineaments.  But  they  will  bear  close  scrutiny. 
Place  yourself  within  the  circumscription  of  the 
work,  breathe  its  atmosphere,  and  you  will  see  that 
Don  Silva  is  portrayed  with  a  delicacy  to  which 
English  story-tellers,  whether  in  prose  or  verse,  have 
not  accustomed  us.  There  are  better  portraits  in 
Browning,  but  there  are  also  worse;  in  Tennyson 
there  are  none  as  good;  and  in  the  other  great 
poets  of  the  present  century  there  are  no  attempts, 
that  I  can  remember,  to  which  we  may  compare  it. 


THE  POETRY  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT      131 

In  spite  of  the  poem  being  called  in  honour  of  his 
mistress,  Don  Silva  is  in  fact  the  central  figure  in 
the  work.  Much  more  than  Fedalma,  he  is  the 
passive  object  of  the  converging  blows  of  Fate. 
The  young  girl,  after  all,  did  what  was  easiest ;  but 
he  is  entangled  in  a  network  of  agony,  without 
choice  or  compliance  of  his  own.  It  is  an  admi 
rable  subject  admirably  treated.  I  may  describe  it 
by  saying  that  it  exhibits  a  perfect  aristocratic  na 
ture  (born  and  bred  at  a  time  when  democratic 
aspirations  were  quite  irrelevant  to  happiness), 
dragged  down  by  no  fault  of  its  own  into  the  vul 
gar  mire  of  error  and  expiation.  The  interest 
which  attaches  to  Don  Silva 's  character  revolves 
about  its  exquisite  human  weakness,  its  manly  scep 
ticism,  its  antipathy  to  the  trenchant,  the  absolute, 
and  arbitrary.  At  the  opening  of  the  book,  the  au 
thor  rehearses  his  various  titles: — 

"  Such  titles  with  their  blazonry  are  his 
Who  keeps  this  fortress,  sworn  Alcayde, 
Lord  of  the  valley,  master  of  the  town, 
Commanding  whom  he  will,  himself  commanded 
By  Christ  his  Lord,  who  sees  him  from  the  cross, 
And  from  bright  heaven  where  the  Mother  pleads; 
By  good  Saint  James,  upon  the  milk-white  steed, 
Who  leaves  his  bliss  to  fight  for  chosen  Spain; 
By  the  dead  gaze  of  all  his  ancestors; 
And  by  the  mystery  of  his  Spanish  blood, 
Charged  with  the  awe  and  glories  of  the  past." 


132  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 


Throughout  the  poem,  we  are  conscious,  during  the 
evolution  of  his  character,  of  the  presence  of  these 
high  mystical  influences,  which,  combined  with  his 
personal  pride,  his  knightly  temper,  his  delicate 
culture,  form  a  splendid  background  for  passionate 
dramatic  action.  'The  finest  pages  in  the  book,  to 
my  taste,  are  those  which  describe  his  lonely  vigil 
in  the  Gypsy  camp,  after  he  has  failed  in  winning 
back  Fedalma,  and  has  pledged  his  faith  to  Zarca. 
Placed  under  guard,  and  left  to  his  own  stern 
thoughts,  his  soul  begins  to  react  against  the  hide 
ous  disorder  to  which  he  has  committed  it,  to  pro 
claim  its  kinship  with  "customs  and  bonds  and 
laws,"  and  its  sacred  need  of  the  light  of  human 
esteem : — 

"  Now  awful  Night, 

Ancestral  mystery  of  mysteries,  came  down 
Past  all  the  generations  of  the  stars, 
And  visited  his  soul  with  touch  more  close 
Than  when  he  kept  that  closer,  briefer  watch, 
Under  the  church's  roof,  beside  his  arms, 
And  won  his  knighthood." 

To  be  appreciated  at  their  worth,  these  pages 
should  be  attentively  read.  Nowhere  has  the  au 
thor's  marvellous  power  of  expression,  the  mingled 
dignity  and  pliancy  of  her  style,  obtained  a  greater 
triumph.  She  has  reproduced  the  expression  of  a 
mind  with  the  same  vigorous  distinctness  as  that 


THE  POETRY  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT      133 

with  which  a  great  painter  represents  the  expres 
sion  of  a  countenance. 

The  character  which  accords  best  with  my  own 
taste  is  that  of  the  minstrel  Juan,  an  extremely 
generous  conception.  He  fills  no  great  part  in  the 
drama ;  he  is  by  nature  the  reverse  of  a  man  of  ac 
tion;  and,  strictly,  the  story  could  very  well  dis 
pense  with  him.  Yet,  for  all  that,  I  should  be 
sorry  to  lose  him,  and  lose  thereby  the  various  ex 
cellent  things  which  are  said  of  him  and  by  him.  I 
do  not  include  his  songs  among  the  latter.  Only 
two  of  the  lyrics  in  the  work  strike  me  as  good :  the 
song  of  Pablo,  "The  world  is  great:  the  birds  all 
fly  from  me";  and,  in  a  lower  degree,  the  chant  of 
the  Zincali,  in  the  fourth  book.  But  I  do  include 
the  words  by  which  he  is  introduced  to  the  reader : 

"  Juan  was  a  troubadour  revived, 
Freshening  life's  dusty  road  with  babbling  rills 
Of  wit  and  song,  living  'mid  harnessed  men 
With  limbs  ungalled  by  armour,  ready  so 
To  soothe  them  weary  and  to  cheer  them  sad. 
Guest  at  the  board,  companion  in  the  camp, 
A  crystal  mirror  to  the  life  around : 
Flashing  the  comment  keen  of  simple  fact 
Defined  in  words;  lending  brief  lyric  voice 
To  grief  and  sadness;  hardly  taking  note 
Of  difference  betwixt  his  own  and  others'; 
But,  rather  singing  as  a  listener 


134  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

To  the  deep  moans,  the  cries,  the  wildstrong  joys 
Of  universal  Nature,  old,  yet  young." 

When  Juan  talks  at  his  ease,  he  strikes  the  note 
of  poetry  much  more  surely  than  when  he  lifts  his 
voice  in  song: — 

"  Yet  if  your  graeiousness  will  not  disdain 
A  poor  plucked  songster,  shall  he  sing  to  you? 
Some  lay  of  afternoons, —  some  ballad  strain 
Of  those  who  ached  once,  but  are  sleeping  now 
Under  the  sun-warmed  flowers?" 

Juan's  link  of  connection  with  the  story  is,  in 
the  first  place,  that  he  is  in  love  with  Fedalma,  and, 
in  the  second,  as  a  piece  of  local  colour.  His  atti 
tude  with  regard  to  Fedalma  is  indicated  with 
beautiful  delicacy: — 

"  O  lady,  constancy  has  kind  and  rank. 
One  man's  is  lordly,  plump,  and  bravely  clad, 
Holds  its  head  high,  and  tells  the  world  its  name : 
Another  man's  is  beggared,  must  go  bare, 
And  shiver  through  the  world,  the  jest  of  all, 
But  that  it  puts  the  motley  on,  and  plays 
Itself  the  jester." 

Nor  are  his  merits  lost  upon  her,  as  she  declares, 
with  no  small  force,— 

"  No !  on  the  close-thronged  spaces  of  the  earth 
A  battle  rages;  Fate  has  carried  me 
'Mid  the  thick  arrows :  I  will  keep  my  stand, — 


THE  POETRY  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT     135 

Nor  shrink,  and  let  the  shaft  pass  by  my  breast 
To  pierce  another.     0,  't  is  written  large, 
The  thing  I  have  to  do.     But  you,  dear  Juan, 
Renounce,  endure,  are  brave,  unurged  by  aught 
Save  the  sweet  overflow  of  your  good-will." 

In  every  human  imbroglio,  be  it  of  a  comic  or  a 
tragic  nature,  it  is  good  to  think  of  an  observer 
standing  aloof,  the  critic,  the  idle  commentator  of 
it  all,  taking  notes,  as  we  may  say,  in  the  interest 
of  truth.  The  exercise  of  this  function  is  the  chief 
ground  of  our  interest  in  Juan.  Yet  as  a  man  of 
action,  too,  he  once  appeals  most  irresistibly  to  our 
sympathies:  I  mean  in  the  admirable  scene  with 
Hinda,  in  which  he  wins  back  his  stolen  finery  by 
his  lute-playing.  This  scene,  which  is  written  in 
prose,  has  a  simple  realistic  power  which  renders 
it  a  truly  remarkable  composition. 

Of  the  different  parts  of  The  Spanish  Gypsy  I 
have  spoken  with  such  fullness  as  my  space  allows : 
it  remains  to  add  a  few  remarks  upon  the  work  as 
a  whole.  Its  great  fault  is  simply  that  it  is  not  a 
genuine  poem.  It  lacks  the  hurrying  quickness, 
the  palpitating  warmth,  the  bursting  melody  of 
such  a  creation.  A  genuine  poem  is  a  tree  that 
breaks  into  blossom  and  shakes  in  the  wind. 
George  Eliot's  elaborate  composition  is  like  a  vast 
mural  design  in  mosaic-work,  where  great  slabs  and 
delicate  morsels  of  stone  are  laid  together  with  won 
derful  art,  where  there  are  plenty  of  noble  lines 


136  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

and  generous  hues,  but  where  everything  is  rigid, 
measured,  and  cold, — nothing  dazzling,  magical, 
and  vocal.  ^The  poem  contains  a  number  of  faulty 
lines, — lines  of  twelve,  of  eleven,  and  of  eight  syl 
lables, — of  which  it  is  easy  to  suppose  that  a  more 
sacredly  commissioned  versifier  would  not  have 
been  guilty.  Occasionally,  in  the  search  for  poetic 
effect,  the  author  decidedly  misses  her  way: — 

"  All  her  being  paused 
In  resolution,  as  some  leonine  wave/'  etc. 

A  "  leonine "  wave  is  rather  to  much  of  a  lion  and 
too  little  of  a  wave.  The  work  possesses  imagina 
tion,  I  think,  in  no  small  measure.  The  descrip 
tion  of  Silva's  feelings  during  his  sojourn  in  the 
Gypsy  camp  is  strongly  pervaded  by  it ;  or  if  per 
chance  the  author  achieved  these  passages  without 
rising  on  the  wings  of  fancy,  her  glory  is  all  the 
greater.  But  the  poem  is  wanting  in  passion. 
The  reader  is  annoyed  by  a  perpetual  sense  of  effort 
and  of  intellectual  tension.  It  is  a  characteristic 
of  George  Eliot,  I  imagine,  to  allow  her  impressions 
to  linger  a  long  time  in  her  mind,  so  that  by  the 
time  they  are  ready  for  use  they  have  lost  much  of 
their  original  freshness  and  vigour.  They  have  ac 
quired,  of  course,  a  number  of  artificial  charms, 
but  they  have  parted  with  their  primal  natural 
simplicity.  In  this  poem  we  see  the  landscape,  the 
people,  the  manners  of  Spain  as  through  a  glass 


THE  POETRY  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT      137 

smoked  by  the  flame  of  meditative  vigils,  just  as 
we  saw  the  outward  aspect  of  Florence  in  Romola. 
The  brightness  of  colouring  is  there,  the  artful 
chiaroscuro,  and  all  the  consecrated  properties  of 
the  scene;  but  they  gleam  in  an  artificial  light. 
The  background  of  the  action  is  admirable  in  spots, 
but  is  cold  and  mechanical  as  a  whole.  The  im 
mense  rhetorical  ingenuity  and  elegance  of  the 
work,  which  constitute  its  main  distinction,  inter 
fere  with  the  faithful,  uncompromising  reflection 
of  the  primary  elements  of  the  subject. 

The  great  merit  of  the  characters  is  that  they  are 
marvellously  well  understood, — far  better  under 
stood  than  in  the  ordinary  picturesque  romance  of 
action,  adventure,  and  mystery.  And  yet  they  are 
not  understood  to  the  bottom ;  they  retain  an  inde 
finably  factitious  air,  which  is  not  sufficiently  jus 
tified  by  their  position  as  ideal  figures.  The  reader 
who  has  attentively  read  the  closing  scene  of  the 
poem  will  know  what  I  mean.  The  scene  shows  re 
markable  talent ;  it  is  eloquent,  it  is  beautiful ;  but 
it  is  arbitrary  and  fanciful,  more  than  unreal, — un 
true.  The  reader  silently  chafes  and  protests,  and 
finally  breaks  forth  and  cries,  "0  for  a  blast  from 
the  outer  world!"  Silva  and  Fedalma  have  de 
veloped  themselves  so  daintily  and  elaborately 
within  the  close-sealed  precincts  of  the  author's 
mind,  that  they  strike  us  at  last  as  acting  not  as 
simple  human  creatures,  but  as  downright  amateurs 


138  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

of  the  morally  graceful  and  picturesque.  To  say 
that  this  is  the  ultimate  impression  of  the  poem  is 
to  say  that  it  is  not  a  great  work.  It  is  in  fact  not 
a  great  drama.  It  is,  in  the  first  place,  an  admi 
rable  study  of  character, — an  essay,  as  they  say,  to 
ward  the  solution  of  a  given  problem  in  conduct. 
In  the  second,  it  is  a  noble  literary  performance. 
It  can  be  read  neither  without  interest  in  the  for 
mer  respect,  nor  without  profit  for  its  signal  merits 
of  style, — and  this  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  the 
versification  is,  as  the  French  say,  as  little  reussi  as 
was  to  be  expected  in  a  writer  beginning  at  a  bound 
with  a  kind  of  verse  which  is  very  much  more  diffi 
cult  than  even  the  best  prose, — the  author's  own 
prose.  I  shall  indicate  most  of  its  merits  and  de 
fects,  great  and  small,  if  I  say  it  is  a  romance, — a 
romance  written  by  one  who  is  emphatically  a 
thinker. 


H.   THE  LEOEND  OF  JUBAL  AND  OTHER  POEMS 

When  the  author  of  Middlemarch  published, 
some  years  since,  her  first  volume  of  verse,  the 
reader,  in  trying  to  judge  it  fairly,  asked  him 
self  what  he  should  think  of  it  if  she  had  never 
published  a  line  of  prose.  The  question,  perhaps, 
was  not  altogether  a  help  to  strict  fairness  of  judg 
ment,  but  the  author  was  protected  from  illiberal 
conclusions  by  tha  fact  that,  practically,  it  was  im- 


THE  POETRY  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT      139 

possible  to  answer  it.  George  Eliot  belongs  to  that 
class  of  pre-eminent  writers  in  relation  to  whom  the 
imagination  comes  to  self -consciousness  only  to  find 
itself  in  subjection.  It  was  impossible  to  disen 
gage  one's  judgment  from  the  permanent  influence 
of  Adam  Bede  and  its  companions,  and  it  was  neces 
sary,  from  the  moment  that  the  author  undertook 
to  play  the  poet's  part,  to  feel  that  her  genius  was 
all  of  one  piece. 

People  have  often  asked  themselves  how  they 
would  estimate  Shakespeare  if  they  knew  him  only 
by  his  comedies,  Homer  if  his  name  stood  only  for 
the  Odyssey,  and  Milton  if  he  had  written  nothing 
but  "Lycidas"  and  the  shorter  pieces.  The  ques 
tion  of  necessity,  inevitable  though  it  is,  leads  to 
nothing.  George  Eliot  is  neither  Homer  nor 
Shakespeare  nor  Milton;  but  her  work,  like  theirs, 
is  a  massive  achievement,  divided  into  a  supremely 
good  and  a  less  good,  and  it  provokes  us,  like 
theirs,  to  the  fruitless  attempt  to  estimate  the  latter 
portion  on  its  own  merits  alone. 

The  little  volume  before  us  gives  us  another  op 
portunity;  but  here,  as  before,  we  find  ourselves 
uncomfortably  divided  between  the  fear,  on  the  one 
hand,  of  being  bribed  into  favour,  and,  on  the 
other,  of  giving  short  measure  of  it.  j^The  author's 
verses  are  a  narrow  manifestation  of  her  genius, 
but  they  are  an  unmistakeable  manifestation. 
Middlemarch  has  made  us  demand  even  finer 


140  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

things  of  her  than  we  did  before,  and  whether,  as 
patented  readers  of  Middlemarch,  we  like  "Jubal" 
and  its  companions  the  less  or  the  more,  we  must 
admit  that  they  are  characteristic  products  of  the 
same  intellect. 

We  imagine  George  Eliot  is  quite  philosopher 
enough,  having  produced  her  poems  mainly  as  a 
kind  of  experimental  entertainment  for  her  own 
mind,  to  let  them  commend  themselves  to  the  pub 
lic  on  any  grounds  whatever  which  will  help  to  il 
lustrate  the  workings  of  versatile  intelligence, — as 
interesting  failures,  if  nothing  better.  She  must 
feel  they  are  interesting;  an  exaggerated  modesty 
cannot  deny  that. 

We  have  found  them  extremely  so.  They  con 
sist  of  a  rhymed  narrative,  of  some  length,  of  the 
career  of  Jubal,  the  legendary  inventor  of  the  lyre ; 
of  a  short  rustic  idyl  in  blank  verse  on  a  theme 
gathered  in  the  Black  Forest  of  Baden;  of  a  tale, 
versified  in  rhyme,  from  Boccaccio ;  and  of  a  series 
of  dramatic  scenes  called  "Armgart, " — the  best 
thing,  to  our  sense,  of  the  four.  To  these  are 
added  a  few  shorter  pieces,  chiefly  in  blank  verse, 
each  of  which  seems  to  us  proportionately  more 
successful  than  the  more  ambitious  onesA  Our  au 
thor's  verse  is  a  mixture  of  spontaneity  of  thought 
and  excessive  reflectiveness  of  expression  and  its 
value  is  generally  more  in  the  idea  than  in  the  form. 
In  whatever  George  Eliot  writes  you  have  the  com- 


THE  POETRY  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT      141 

fortable  certainty,  infrequent  in  other  quarters,  of 
finding  an  idea,  and  you  get  the  substance  of  her 
thought  in  the  short  poems,  without  the  somewhat 
rigid  envelope  of  her  poetic  diction. 
)  If  we  may  say,  broadly,  that  the  supreme  merit 
ot  a  poem  is  in  having  warmth,  and  that  it  is  less 
and  less  valuable  in  proportion  as  it  cools  by  too 
long  waiting  upon  either  fastidious  skill  or  ineffi 
cient  skill,  the  little  group  of  verses  entitled 
"Brother  and  Sister"  deserve  our  preference. 
They  have  extreme  loveliness,  and  the  feeling  they 
so  abundantly  express  is  of  a  much  less  intellectual- 
ised  sort  than  that  which  prevails  in  the  other 
poems.  It  is  seldom  that  one  of  our  author's  com 
positions  concludes  upon  so  simply  sentimental  a 
note  as  the  last  lines  of  "Brother  and  Sister": — 

"But  were  another  childhood-world  my  share, 
I  would  be  born  a  little  sister  there ! " 

This  will  be  interesting  to  many  readers  as  pro 
ceeding  more  directly  from  the  writer's  personal 
experience    than    anything    else    they    remember. 
I  George  Eliot's  is  a  personality  so  enveloped  in  the 
smists  of  reflection  that  it  is  an  uncommon  sensation 
to  find  one's  self  in  immediate  contact  with  it. 
This  charming  poem,  too,  throws  a  grateful  light  on 
some  of  the  best  pages  the  author  has  written, — 
those  in  which  she  describes  her  heroine's  childish 
years  in  The  Mill  on  the  Floss.     The  finest  thing  in 


142  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

that  admirable  novel  has  always  been,  to  our  taste, 
not  its  portrayal  of  the  young  girl's  love-struggles 
as  regards  her  lover,  but  those  as  regards  her 
brother.  The  former  are  fiction, — skilful  fiction ; 
but  the  latter  are  warm  reality,  and  the  merit  of 
the  verses  we  speak  of  is  that  they  are  coloured 
from  the  same  source. 

In  "Stradivarius,"  the  famous  old  violin-maker 
affirms  in  every  pregnant  phrase  the  supreme  duty 
of  being  perfect  in  one 's  labour,  and  lays  down  the 
dictum,  which  should  be  the  first  article  in  every 
artist's  faith: — 

"'Tis  God  gives  skill, 

But  not  without  men's  hands:     He  could  not  make 
Antonio  Stradivari's  violins 
Without  Antonio." 

This  is  the  only  really  inspiring  working-creed,  and 
our  author's  utterance  of  it  justifies  her  claim  to 
having  the  distinctively  artistic  mind,  more  forcibly 
than  her  not  infrequent  shortcomings  in  the  direc 
tion  of  an  artistic  ensemble. 

Many  persons  will  probably  pronounce  "A  Minor 
Prophet"  the  gem  of  this  little  collection,  and  it  is 
certainly  interesting,  for  a  great  many  reasons. 
It  may  seem  to  characterise  the  author  on  a  number 
of  sides.  It  illustrates  vividly,  in  the  extraordi 
nary  ingenuity  and  flexibility  of  its  diction,  her  ex 
treme  provocation  to  indulge  in  the  verbal  licence 


THE  POETRY  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT      143 

of  verse.  It  reads  almost  like  a  close  imitation  of 
Browning,  the  great  master  of  the  poetical  gro 
tesque,  except  that  it  observes  a  discretion  which 
the  poet  of  Red-Cotton  Night-caps  long  ago  threw 
overboard.  When  one  can  say  neat  things  with 
such  rhythmic  felicity,  why  not  attempt  it,  even  if 
one  has  at  one's  command  the  magnificent  vehicle 
of  the  style  of  Middlemarchf 

The  poem  is  a  kindly  satire  upon  the  views  and 
the  person  of  an  American  vegetarian,  a  certain 
Elias  Baptist  Butterworth, — a  gentleman,  presum 
ably,  who  under  another  name,  as  an  evening  caller, 
has  not  a  little  retarded  the  flight  of  time  for  the 
author.  Mr.  Browning  has  written  nothing  better 
than  the  account  of  the  Butterworthian  "  Thought 
Atmosphere ' ' : — 

"And  when  all  earth  is  vegetarian, 
When,  lacking  butchers,  quadrupeds  die  out, 
And  less  Thought-atmosphere  is  re-absorbed 
By  nerves  of  insects  parasitical, 
Those  higher  truths,  seized  now  by  higher  minds, 
But  not  expressed  (the  insects  hindering), 
Will  either  flash  out  into  eloquence, 
Or,  better  still,  be  comprehensible, 
By  rappings  simply,  without  need  of  roots." 

The  author  proceeds  to  give  a  sketch  of  the  beatific 
state  of  things  under  the  vegetarian  regime  prophe 
sied  by  her  friend  in 


144  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

"  Mildly  nasal  tones, 
And  vowels  stretched  to  suit  the  widest  views." 

How,  for  instance, 

"  Sahara  will  be  populous 
With  families  of  gentlemen  retired 
From  commerce  in  more  Central  Africa, 
Who  order  coolness,  as  we  order  coal, 
And  have  a  lobe  anterior  strong  enough 
To  think  away  the  sand-storms." 

Or  how,  as  water  is  probably  a  non-conductor  of 
the  Thought-atmosphere, 

"  Fishes  may  lead  carnivorous  lives  obscure, 
But  must  not  dream  of  culinary  rank 
Or  being  dished  in  good  society." 

Then  follows  the  author's  own  melancholy  head- 
shake  and  her  reflections  on  the  theme  that  there 
can  be  no  easy  millennium,  and  that 

"  Bitterly 

I  feel  that  every  change  upon  this  earth 
Is  bought  with  sacrifice"; 

and  that,  even  if  Mr.  Butterworth  's  axioms  were 
not  too  good  to  be. true,  one  might  deprecate  them 
in  the  interest  of  that  happiness  which  is  associated 
with  error  that  is  deeply  familiar.  Human  im 
provement,  she  concludes,  is  something  both  larger 
and  smaller  than  the  vegetarian  bliss,  and  consists 


THE  POETRY  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT      145 

less  in  a  realised  perfection  than  in  the  sublime 
dissatisfaction  of  generous  souls  with  the  shortcom 
ings  of  the  actual.  All  this  is  unfolded  in  verse 
which,  if  without  the  absolute  pulse  of  spontaneity, 
has  at  least  something  that  closely  resembles  it. 
It  has  very  fine  passages. 

Very  fine,  too,  both  in  passages  and  as  a  whole, 
is  "The  Legend  of  Jubal."  It  is  noteworthy,  by 
the  way,  that  three  of  these  poems  are  on  themes 
connected  with  music;  and  yet  we  remember  no 
representation  of  a  musician  among  the  multitudi 
nous  figures  which  people  the  author's  novels.  But 
George  Eliot,  we  take  it,  has  the  musical  sense  in 
no  small  degree,  and  the  origin  of  melody  and  har 
mony  is  here  described  in  some  very  picturesque 
and  sustained  poetry. 

Jubal  invents  the  lyre  and  teaches  his  compan 
ions  and  his  tribe  how  to  use  it,  and  then  goes 
forth  to  wander  in  quest  of  new  musical  inspira 
tion.  In  this  pursuit  he  grows  patriarchally  old, 
and  at  last  makes  his  way  back  to  his  own  people. 
He  finds  them,  greatly  advanced  in  civilisation, 
celebrating  what  we  should  call  nowadays  his  cen 
tennial,  and  making  his  name  the  refrain  of  their 
gongs.  He  goes  in  among  them  and  declares  him 
self,  but  they  receive  him  as  a  lunatic,  and  buffet 
him,  and  thrust  him  out  into  the  wilderness  again, 
where  he  succumbs  to  their  unconscious  ingrati 
tude. 


146  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

11  The  immortal  name  of  Jubal  filled  the  sky, 
While  Jubal,  lonely,  laid  him  down  to  die." 

In  his  last  hour  he  has  a  kind  of  metaphysical 
vision  which  consoles  him,  and  enables  him  to  die 
contented.  A  mystic  voice  assures  him  that  he  has 
no  cause  for  complaint;  that  his  use  to  mankind 
was  everything,  and  his  credit  and  glory  nothing ; 
that  being  rich  in  his  genius,  it  was  his  part  to 
give,  gratuitously,  to  unendowed  humanity;  and 
that  the  knowledge  of  his  having  become  a  part  of 
man's  joy,  and  an  image  in  man's  soul,  should  rec 
oncile  him  to  the  prospect  of  lying  senseless  in  the 
tomb.  'Jubal  assents,  and  expires. 

"  A  quenched  sun-wave, 
The  all-creating  Presence  for  his  grave." 

This  is  very  noble  and  heroic  doctrine,  and  is 
enforced  in  verse  not  unworthy  of  it  for  having  a 
certain  air  of  strain  and  effort ;  for  surely  it  is  not 
doctrine  that  the  egoistic  heart  rises  to  without 
some  experimental  flutter  of  the  wings.  It  is 
the  expression  of  a  pessimistic  philosophy  which 
pivots  upon  itself  only  in  the  face  of  a  really  for 
midable  ultimatum.  We  cordially  accept  it,  how 
ever,  and  are  tolerably  confident  that  the  artist  in 
general,  in  his  death-throes,  will  find  less  repose  in 
the  idea  of  a  heavenly  compensation  for  earthly 


THE  POETRY  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT      147 

neglect  than  in  the  certainty  that  humanity  is  really 
assimilating  his  productions. 

"Agatha"  is  slighter  in  sentiment  than  its  com 
panions,  and  has  the  vague  aroma  of  an  idea  rather 
than  the  positive  weight  of  thought.  It  is  very 
graceful.  "How  Lisa  loved  the  King"  seems  to 
us  to  have,  more  than  its  companions,  the  easy 
flow  and  abundance  of  prime  poetry ;  it  wears  a  re 
flection  of  the  incomparable  naturalness  of  its 
model  in  the  Decameron.  "Armgart"  we  have 
found  extremely  interesting,  although  perhaps  it 
offers  plainest  proof  of  what  the  author  sacrifices 
in  renouncing  prose.  The  drama,  in  prose,  would 
have  been  vividly  dramatic,  while,  as  it  stands,  we 
have  merely  a  situation  contemplated,  rather  than 
unfolded,  in  a  dramatic  light.  A  great  singer  loses 
her  voice,  and  a  patronising  nobleman,  who,  before 
the  calamity,  had  wished  her  to  become  his  wife, 
retire  from  the  stage,  and  employ  her  genius  for 
the  beguilement  of  private  life,  finds  that  he  has 
urgent  business  in  another  neighbourhood,  and  that 
he  has  not  the  mission  to  espouse  her  misfortune. 
Armgart  rails  tremendously  at  fate,  often  in  very 
striking  phrase.  The  Count  of  course,  in  bidding 
her  farewell,  has  hoped  that  time  will  soften  her 
disappointment : — 

"  That  empty  cup  so  neatly  ciphered,  '  Time/ 
Handed  me  as  a  cordial  for  despair. 


148  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

Time  —  what  a  word  to  fling  in  charity! 

Bland,  neutral  word  for  slow,  dull-beating  pain,  — 

Days,  months,  and  years  !  " 

We  must  refer  the  reader  to  the  poem  itself  for 
knowledge  how  resignation  comes  to  so  bitter  a 
pain  as  the  mutilation  of  conscious  genius.  It 
comes  to  Armgart  because  she  is  a  very  superior 
girl  ;  and  though  her  outline,  here,  is  at  once  rather 
sketchy  and  rather  rigid,  she  may  be  added  to  that 
group  of  magnificently  generous  women,  —  the 
Dinahs,  the  Maggies,  the  Eomolas,  the  Dorotheas,— 
the  representation  of  whom  is  our  author's  chief 
title  to  our  gratitude.  But  in  spite  of  Armgart  's 
resignation,  the  moral  atmosphere  of  the  poem,  like 
that  of  most  of  the  others  and  like  that  of  most  of 
George  Eliot's  writings,  is  an  almost  gratuitously 


It  would  take  more  space  than  we  can  command 
to  say  how  it  is  that  at  this  and  at  other  points  our 
author  strikes  us  as  a  spirit  mysteriously  perverted 
from  her  natural  temper.  We  have  a  feeling  that, 
both  intellectually  and  morally,  her  genius  is  es 
sentially  of  a  simpler  order  than  most  of  her  re 
cent  manifestations  of  it.  Intellectually,  it  has  run 
to  epigram  and  polished  cleverness,  and  morally  to 
a  sort  of  conscious  and  ambitious  scepticism,  with 
which  it  only  half  commingles.  The  interesting 
thing  would  be  to  trace  the  moral  divergence  from 
the  characteristic  type.  At  bottom,  according  to 


THE  POETRY  OF  GEORGE  ELIOT     149 

this  notion,  the  author  of  Romola  and  Middlemarch 
has  an  ardent  desire  and  faculty  for  positive,  active, 
constructive  belief  of  the  old-fashioned  kind,  but 
she  has  fallen  upon  a  critical  age  and  felt  its  conta 
gion  and  dominion.  If,  with  her  magnificent  gifts, 
she  had  been  borne  by  the  mighty  general  current 
in  the  direction  of  passionate  faith,  we  often  think 
that  she  would  have  achieved  something  incalcu 
lably  great.  \  >/ 


THE  LIMITATIONS  OF  DICKENS 


A  review  of  Our  Mutual  Friend.  By  Charles  Dickens. 
New  York:  Harper  Brothers.  1865.  Originally  published 
in  The  Nation,  December  21,  1865. 


THE  LIMITATIONS  OF  DICKENS 

OUR  Mutual  Friend  is,  to  our  perception,  the 
poorest  of  Mr.  Dickens 's  works.  And  it  is 
poor  with  the  poverty  not  of  momentary  embar 
rassment,  but  of  permanent  exhaustion.  It  is 
wanting  in  inspiration.  For  the  last  ten  years  it 
has  seemed  to  us  that  Mr.  Dickens  has  been  unmis- 
takeably  forcing  himself.  Bleak  House  was  forced ; 
Little  Dorrit  was  laboured ;  the  present  work  is  dug 
out  as  with  a  spade  and  pickaxe. 

Of  course — to  anticipate  the  usual  argument — 
who  but  Dickens  could  have  written  it?  Who,  in 
deed?  Who  else  would  have  established  a  lady  in 
business  in  a  novel  on  the  admirably  solid  basis  of 
her  always  putting  on  gloves  and  tying  a  handker 
chief  around  her  head  in  moments  of  grief,  and  of 
her  habitually  addressing  her  family  with  ' '  Peace ! 
hold!"  It  is  needless  to  say  that  Mrs.  Eeginald 
Wilfer  is  first  and  last  the  occasion  of  considerable 
true  humour.  When,  after  conducting  her 
daughter  to  Mrs.  Boffin 's  carriage,  in  sight  of  all 
the  envious  neighbours,  she  is  described  as  enjoy 
ing  her  triumph  during  the  next  quarter  of  an  hour 
by  airing  herself  on  the  doorstep  "in  a  kind  of 
153 


154  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

splendidly  serene  trance,"  we  laugh  with  as  un 
critical  a  laugh  as  could  be  desired  of  us.  We  pay 
the  same  tribute  to  her  assertions,  as  she  narrates 
the  glories  of  the  society  she  enjoyed  at  her  father's 
table,  that  she  has  known  as  many  as  three  copper 
plate  engravers  exchanging  the  most  exquisite  sal 
lies  and  retorts  there  at  one  time.  But  when  to 
these  we  have  added  a  dozen  more  happy  examples 
of  the  humour  which  was  exhaled  from  every  line 
of  Mr.  Dickens 's  earlier  writings,  we  shall  have 
closed  the  list  of  the  merits  of  the  work  before  us. 

To  say  that  the  conduct  of  the  story,  with  all 
its  complications,  betrays  a  long-practised  hand, 
is  to  pay  no  compliment  worthy  the  author.  If 
this  were,  indeed,  a  compliment,  we  should  be  in 
clined  to  carry  it  further,  and  congratulate 
him  on  his  success  in  what  we  should  call  the 
manufacture  of  fiction;  for  in  so  doing  we  should 
express  a  feeling  that  has  attended  us  throughout 
the  book.  Seldom,  we  reflected,  had  we  read  a 
book  so  intensely  written^so>  little  seen,  known,  or 
felt. 

In  all  Mr.  Dickens 's  works  the  fantastic  has 
been  his  great  resource;  and  while  his  fancy  was 
lively  and  vigorous  it  accomplished  great  things. 
But  the  fantastic,  when  the  fancy  is  dead,  is  a  very 
poor  business.  The  movement  of  Mr.  Dickens 's 
fancy  in  Mr.  Wilfer  and  Mr.  Boffin  and  Lady 
Tippins,  and  the  Lammles  and  Miss  Wren,  and 


THE  LIMITATIONS  OF  DICKENS     155 

even  in  Eugene  Wrayburn,  is,  to  our  mind,  a 
movement  lifeless,  forced,  mechanical.  It  is  the 
letter  of  his  old  humour  without  the  spirit.  It  is 
hardly  too  much  to  say  that  every  character  here 
put  before  us  is  a  mere  bundle  of  eccentricities, 
animated  by  no  principle  of  nature  whatever. 

In  former  days  there  reigned  in  Mr.  Dickens 's 
extravagances  a  comparative  consistency;  they 
were  exaggerated  statements  of  types  that  really 
existed.  We  had,  perhaps,  never  known  a  New-\ 
man  Noggs,  nor  a  Pecksniff,  nor  a  Micawber;  \ 
but  we  had  known  persons  of  whom  these  figures,/ 
were  but  the  strictly  logical  consummation.  -^But 
among  the  grotesque  creatures  who  occupy  the 
pages  before^Tis,  there  is  not  one  whom  we  can 
refer  to  as  an  existing  type.  In  all  Mr.  Dickens 's 
stories,  indeed,  the  reader  has  been  called  upon, 
and  has  willingly  consented,  to  accept  a  certain 
number  of  figures  or  creatures  of  pure  fancy,  for 
this  was  the  author's  poetry.  He  was,  moreover, 
always  repaid  for  his  concession  by  a  peculiar 
beauty  or  power  in  these  exceptional  characters. 
But  he  is  now  expected  to  make  the  same  conces 
sion,  with  a  very  inadequate  reward. 

What  do  we  get  in  return  for  accepting  Miss 
Jenny  Wren  as  a  possible  person?  This  young 
lady  is  the  type  of  a  certain  class  of  characters  of 
which  Mr.  Dickens  has  made  a  specialty,  and  with 
which  he  has  been  accustomed  to  draw  alternate 


156  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

smiles  and  tears,  according  as  he  pressed  one  spring 
or  another.  But  this  is  very  cheap  merriment  and 
very  cheap  pathos.  Miss  Jenny  Wren  is  a  poor 
little  dwarf,  afflicted  as  she  constantly  reiterates, 
with  a  "bad  back"  and  "queer  legs,"  who  makes 
doll's  dresses,  and  is  for  ever  pricking  at  those 
with  whom  she  converses  in  the  air,  with  her 
needle,  and  assuring  them  that  she  knows  their 
"tricks  and  their  manners."  Like  all  Mr.  Dick 
ens  's  pathetic  characters,  she  is  a  little  monster; 
she  is  deformed,  unhealthy,  unnatural;  she  be 
longs  to  the  troop  of  hunchbacks,  imbeciles,  and 
precocious  children  who  have  carried  on  the  sen 
timental  business  in  all  Mr.  Dickens 's  novels;  the 
little  Nells,  the  Smikes,  the  Paul  Dombeys. 

Mr.  Dickens  goes  as  far  out  of  the  way  for  his 
wicked  people  as  he  does  for  his  good  ones.  Rogue 
Riderhood,  indeed,  in  the  present  story,  is  villain 
ous  with  a  sufficiently  natural  villainy;  he  belongs 
to  that  quarter  of  society  in  which  the  author  is 
most  at  his  ease.  But  was  there  ever  such  wicked 
ness  as  that  of  the  Lammles  and  Mr.  Fledgeby? 
Not  that  people  have  not  been  as  mischievous  as 
they;  but  was  any  one  ever  mischievous  in  that 
singular  fashion?  Did  a  couple  of  elegant  swin 
dlers  ever  take  such  particular  pains  to  be  aggres 
sively  inhuman? — for  we  can  find  no  other  word 
for  the  gratuitous  distortions  to  which  they  are 
subjected.  The  word  humanity  strikes  us  as 


THE  LIMITATIONS  OF  DICKENS     157 

strangely  discordant,  in  the  midst  of  these  pages; 
for,  let  us  boldly  declare  it,  there  is  no  humanity 
here. 

Humanity  is  nearer  home  than  the  Boffins,  and 
the  Lammles,  and  the  Wilfers,  and  the  Veneerings. 
It  is  in  what  men  have  in  common  with  each 
other,  and  not  what  they  have  in  distinction.  The 
people  just  named  have  nothing  in  common  with 
each  other,  except  the  fact  that  they  have  nothing 
in  common  with  mankind  at  large.  What  a  world 
were  this  world  if  the  world  of  Our  Mutual  Friend 
were  an  honest  reflection  of  it !  But  a  community 
of  eccentrics  is  impossible.  Rules  alone  are  con 
sistent  with  each  other;  exceptions  are  inconsist 
ent.  Society  is  maintained  by  natural  sense  and 
natural  feeling.  We  cannot  conceive  a  society  in 
which  these  principles  are  not  in  some  manner  rep 
resented.  Where  in  these  pages  are  the  depos 
itaries  of  that  intelligence  without  which  the 
movement  of  life  would  cease?  Who  represents 
nature  ? 

Accepting  half  of  Mr.  Dickens 's  persons  as  in 
tentionally  grotesque,  where  are  those  examplars 
of  sound  humanity  who  should  afford  us  the 
proper  measure  of  their  companions'  variations? 
We  ought  not,  in  justice  to  the  author,  to  seek 
them  among  his  weaker — that  is,  his  mere  conven 
tional — characters;  in  John  Harmon,  Lizzie 
Hexam,  or  Mortimer  Lightwood;  but  we  assuredly 


158  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

cannot  find  them  among  his  stronger — that  is,  his 
artificial  creations. 

Suppose  we  take  Eugene  Wrayburn  and  Bradley 
Headstone.  They  occupy  a  half-way  position  be 
tween  the  habitual  probable  of  nature  and  the 
habitual  impossible  of  Mr.  Dickens.  A  large  por 
tion  of  the  story  rests  upon  the  enmity  borne  by 
Headstone  to  Wrayburn,  both  being  in  love  with 
the  same  woman.  Wrayburn  is  a  gentleman,  and 
Headstone  is  one  of  the  people.  Wrayburn  is  well- 
bred,  careless,  elegant,  sceptical,  and  idle:  Head 
stone  is  a  high-tempered,  hard-working,  ambitious 
young  schoolmaster.  There  lay  in  the  opposition 
of  these  two  characters  a  very  good  story.  But 
the  prime  requisite  was  that  they  should  be  char 
acters:  Mr.  Dickens,  according  to  his  usual  plan, 
has  made  them  simply  figures,  and  between  them 
the  story  that  was  to  be,  the  story  that  should  have 
been,  has  evaporated.  Wrayburn  lounges  about 
with  his  hands  in  his  pockets,  smoking  a  cigar,  and 
talking  nonsense.  Headstone  strides  about,  clench 
ing  his  fists  and  biting  his  lips  and  grasping  his 
stick. 

There  is  one  scene  in  which  Wrayburn  chaffs  the 
schoolmaster  with  easy  insolence,  while  the  latter 
writhes  impotently  under  his  well-bred  sarcasm. 
This  scene  is  very  clever,  but  it  is  very  insufficient. 
If  the  majority  of  readers  were  not  so  very  timid 
in  the  use  of  words  we  should  call  it  vulgar.  By 


THE  LIMITATIONS  OF  DICKENS     159 

this  we  do  not  mean  to  indicate  the  conventional 
impropriety  of  two  gentlemen  exchanging  lively 
personalities;  we  mean  to  emphasise  the  essentially 
small  character  of  these  personalities.  In  other 
words,  the  moment,  dramatically,  is  great,  while 
the  author's  conception  is  weak.  The  friction  of 
two  men,  of  two  characters,  of  two  passions,  pro 
duces  stronger  sparks  than  Wrayburn's  boyish 
repartees  and  Headstone's  melodramatic  common 
places. 

Such  scenes  as  this  are  useful  in  fixing  the  limits 
of  Mr.  Dickens '&  insight.  Insight  is,  perhaps,  too 
strong  a  word ;  for  we  are  convinced  that  it  is  one 
of  the  chief  conditions  of  his  genius  not  to  see 
beneath  the  surface  of  things.  If  we  might  hazard 
a  definition  of  his  literary  character,  we  should, 
accordingly,  call  him  the  greatest  of  superficial 
novelists.  We  are  aware  that  this  definition  con 
fines  him  to  an  inferior  rank  in  the  department  of 
letters  which  he  adorns;  but  we  accept  this  con 
sequence  of  our  proposition.  It  were,  in  our  opinion, 
an  offence  against  humanity  to  place  Mr.  Dickens 
among  the  greatest  novelists.  For,  to  repeat  what 
we  have  already  intimated,  he  has  created  nothing 
but  figure.  He  has  added  nothing  to  our  under 
standing  of  human  character.  He  is  master  of  but 
two  alternatives :  he  reconciles  us  to  what  is  com 
monplace,  and  he  reconciles  us  to  what  is  odd. 
The  value  of  the  former  service  is  questionable; 


160  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

and  the  manner  in  which  Mr.  Dickens  performs 
it  sometimes  conveys  a  certain  impression  of 
charlatanism.  The  value  of  the  latter  service  is 
incontestable,  and  here  Mr.  Dickens  is  an  honest, 
an  admirable  artist. 

But  what  is  the  condition  of  the  truly  great 
novelist?  For  him  there  are  no  alternatives,  for 
him  there  are  no  oddities,  for  him  there  is  nothing 
outside  of  humanity.  He  cannot  shirk  it;  it  im 
poses  itself  upon  him.  For  him  alone,  therefore, 
there  is  a  true  and  a  false;  for  him  alone,  it  is 
possible  to  be  right,  because  it  is  possible  to  be 
wrong.  Mr.  Dickens  is  a  great  observer  and  a 
great  humourist,  but  he  is  nothing  of  a  philosopher. 

Some  people  may  hereupon  say,  so  much  the 
better ;  we  say,  so  much  the  worse.  For  a  novelist 
very  soon  has  need  of  a  little  philosophy.  In  treat 
ing  of  Micawber,  and  Boffin,  and  Pickwick,  et  hoc 
genus  omne,  he  can,  indeed,  dispense  with  it,  for 
this — we  say  it  with  all  deference — is  not  serious 
writing.  But  when  he  comes  to  tell  the  story  of  a 
passion,  a  story  like  that  of  Headstone  and  Wray- 
burn,  he  becomes  a  moralist  as  well  as  an  artist. 
He  must  know  man  as  well  as  men,  and  to  know 
man  is  to  be  a  philosopher. 

The  writer  who  knows  men  alone,  if  he  have  Mr. 
Dickens 's  humour  and  fancy,  will  give  us  figures 
and  pictures  for  which  we  cannot  be  too  grateful, 
for  he  will  enlarge  our  knowledge  of  the  world. 


THE  LIMITATIONS  OF  DICKENS     161 

But  when  he  introduces  men  and  women  whose 
interest  is  preconceived  to  lie  not  in  the  poverty, 
the  weakness,  the  drollery  of  their  natures,  but 
in  their  complete  and  unconscious  subjection  to  or 
dinary  and  healthy  human  emotions,  all  his  hu 
mour,  all  his  fancy,  will  avail  him  nothing  if,  out 
of  the  fullness  of  his  sympathy,  he  is  unable  to 
prosecute  those  generalisations  in  which  alone  con 
sists  the  real  greatness  of  a  work  of  art. 

This  may  sound  like  very  subtle  talk  about  a 
very  simple  matter.  It  is  rather  very  simple  talk 
about  a  very  subtle  matter.  A  story  based  upon 
those  elementary  passions  in  which  alone  we  seek 
the  true  and  final  manifestation  of  character  must 
be  told  in  a  spirit  of  intellectual  superiority  to 
those  passions.  ^Jiat  is.  the  author  must  under 
stand  what  he  is  talking  about.  The  perusal  of 
a  story  so  told  is  one  of  the  most  elevating  ex 
periences  within  the  reach  of  the  human  mind. 
The  perusal  of  a  story  which  is  not  so  told  is  in 
finitely  depressing  and  unprofitable. 


TENNYSON'S  DRAMA 


I.  A  review  of  Queen  Mary.     A  Drama.     By  Alfred  Ten 
nyson.     Boston:     J.     R.     Osgood.     1875.     Originally     pub 
lished  in  The  Galaxy,  September,  1875. 

Queen  Mary  was  produced  at  the  Lyceum  Theatre,  Lon 
don,  in  1876.  Mr.  Irving  playing  the  part  of  Philip  II. 
It  was  Tennyson's  wish  that  he  should  appear  as  Cardinal 
Pole,  but  in  the  acting  version  that  character  was  elimi 
nated.  The  part  of  Philip  has  been  immortalized  by 
Whistler's  celebrated  painting  of  Irving  in  that  role.  ED. 

II.  A  review  of  Harold':     A  Drama.     By  Alfred  Tenny 
son.     London.     1877.     Originally  published  in  The  Nation, 
January  18,  1877. 


TENNYSON'S  DRAMA 

I.   QUEEN    MARY 

ANEW  poem  by  Mr.  Tennyson  is  certain  to  be 
largely  criticised,  and  if  the  new  poem  is  a 
drama,  the  performance  must  be  a  great  event  for 
criticism  as  well  as  for  poetry.  Great  surprise, 
great  hopes,  and  great  fears  had  been  called  into 
being  by  the  announcement  that  the  author  of  so 
many  finely  musical  lyrics  and  finished,  chiselled 
specimens  of  narrative  verse,  had  tempted  fortune 
in  the  perilous  field  of  the  drama. 

Few  poets  seemed  less  dramatic  than  Tenny 
son,  even  in  his  most  dramatic  attempts — in 
"Maud,"  in  "Enoch  Arden,"  or  in  certain  of  the 
Idyls  of  the  King.  He  had  never  used  the 
dramatic  form,  even  by  snatches;  and  though  no 
critic  was  qualified  to  affirm  that  he  had  no  slum 
bering  ambition  in  that  direction,  it  seemed  likely 
that  a  poet  who  had  apparently  passed  the  meridian 
of  his  power  had  nothing  absolutely  new  to  show 
us.  On  the  other  hand,  if  he  had  for  years  been 
keeping  a  gift  in  reserve,  and  suffering  it  to  ripen 
and  mellow  in  some  deep  corner  of  his  genius, 
165 


166  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

while  shallower  tendencies  waxed  and  waned  above 
it,  it  was  not  unjust  to  expect  that  the  consum 
mate  fruit  would  prove  magnificent. 

On  the  whole,  we  think  that  doubt  was  upper 
most  in  the  minds  of  those  persons  who  to  a  lively 
appreciation  of  the  author  of  "Maud"  added  a 
vivid  conception  of  the  exigencies  of  the  drama. 
But  at  last  Queen  Mary  appeared,  and  conjecture 
was  able  to  merge  itself  in  knowledge.  There  was 
a  momentary  interval,  during  which  we  all  read, 
among  the  cable  telegrams  in  the  newspapers,  that 
the  London  Times  affirmed  the  new  drama  to  con 
tain  more  "true  fire"  than  anything  since  Shake 
speare  had  laid  down  the  pen.  This  gave  an  edge 
to  our  impatience;  for  "fire,"  true  or  false,  was 
not  what  the  Laureate's  admirers  had  hitherto 
claimed  for  him.  In  a  day  or  two,  however,  most 
people  had  the  work  in  their  hands. 

Every  one,  it  seems  to  us,  has  been  justified — 
those  who  hoped  (that  is,  expected),  those  who 
feared,  and  those  who  were  mainly  surprised. 
Queen  Mary  is  both  better  and  less  good  than  was 
to  have  been  supposed,  and  both  in  its  merits  and 
its  defects  it  is  extremely  singular.  It  is  the  least 
Tennysonian  of  all  the  author's  productions;  and 
we  may  say  that  he  has  not  so  much  refuted  as 
evaded  the  charge  that  he  is  not  a  dramatic  poet. 
To  produce  his  drama  he  has  had  to  cease  to  be 
himself.  Even  if  Queen  Mary,  as  a  drama,  had 


TENNYSON'S  DRAMA  167 

many  more  than  its  actual  faults,  this  fact  alone — 
this  extraordinary  defeasance  by  the  poet  of  his 
familiar  identity — would  make  it  a  remarkable 
work. 

We  know  of  few  similar  phenomena  in  the  his 
tory  of  literature — few  such  examples  of  rupture 
with  a  consecrated  past.  Poets  in  their  prime  have 
groped  and  experimented,  tried  this  and  that, 
and  finally  made  a  great  success  in  a  very  differ 
ent  vein  from  that  in  which  they  had  found  their 
early  successes.  But  the  writers  in  prose  or  in 
verse  are  few  who,  after  a  lifetime  spent  in  elab 
orating  and  perfecting  a  certain  definite  and  ex 
tremely  characteristic  manner,  have  at  Mr.  Tenny 
son  's  age  suddenly  dismissed  it  from  use  and  stood 
forth  clad  from  head  to  foot  in  a  disguise  without 
a  flaw.  We  are  sure  that  the  other  great  English 
poet— the  author  of  "The  Ring  and  the  Book,"— 
would  be  quite  incapable  of  any  such  feat.  The 
more 's  the  pity,  as  many  of  his  readers  will  say ! 

Queen  Mary  is  upward  of  three  hundred  pages 
long;  and  yet  in  all  these  three  hundred  pages 
there  is  hardly  a  trace  of  the  Tennyson  we  know. 
Of  course  the  reader  is  on  the  watch  for  remind 
ers  of  the  writer  he  has  greatly  loved;  and  of 
course,  vivid  signs  being  absent,  he  finds  a  certain 
eloquence  in  the  slightest  intimations.  When  he 
reads  that 


168  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

— ' — "that  same  tide 

Which,  coming  with  our  coming,  seemed  to  smile 
And  sparkle  like  our  fortune  as  thou  saidest, 
Ban  sunless  down  and  moaned  against  the  piers," 

he  seems  for  a  moment  to  detect  the  peculiar  note 
and  rhythm  of  "Enoch  Arden"  or  "The  Princess." 
Just  preceding  these,  indeed,  is  a  line  which  seems 
Tennysonian  because  it  is  in  a  poem  by  Tennyson: 

"Last  night  I  climbed  into  the  gate-house,  Brett, 
And  scared  the  gray  old  porter  and  his  wife." 

In  such  touches  as  these  the  Tennysonian  note 
is  faintly  struck;  but  if  the  poem  were  unsigned, 
they  would  not  do  much  toward  pointing  out  the 
author.  On  the  other  hand,  the  fine  passages  in 
Queen  Mary  are  conspicuously  deficient  in  those 
peculiar  cadences — that  exquisite  perfume  of  dic 
tion — which  every  young  poet  of  the  day  has  had 
his  hour  of  imitating.  We  may  give  as  an  example 
Pole's  striking  denial  of  the  charge  that  the 
Church  of  Rome  has  ever  known  trepidation : 

"  What,  my  Lord ! 

The  Church  on  Petra's  rock?  Never!  I  have  seen 
A  pine  in  Italy  that  cast  its  shadow 
Athwart  a  cataract ;  firm  stood  the  pine  — 
The  cataract  shook  the  shadow.     To  my  mind 
The  cataract  typed  the  headlong  plunge  and  fall 
Of  heresy  to  the  pit :  the  pine  was  Rome. 


TENNYSON'S  DRAMA  169 

You  see,  my  Lords, 

It  was  the  shadow  of  the  Church  that  trembled." 

This  reads  like  Tennyson  doing  his  best  not  to  be 
Tennyson,  and  very  fairly  succeeding.  Well  as 
he  succeeds,  however,  and  admirably  skilful  and 
clever  as  is  his  attempt  throughout  to  play  tricks 
with  his  old  habits  of  language,  and  prove  that  he 
was  not  the  slave  but  the  master  of  the  classic 
Tennysonian  rhythm,  I  think  that  few  readers  can 
fail  to  ask  themselves  whether  the  new  gift  is  of 
equal  value  with  the  old.  The  question  will  per 
haps  set  them  to  fingering  over  the  nearest  volume 
of  the  poet  at  hand,  to  refresh  their  memory  of 
his  ancient  magic.  It  has  rendered  the  present 
writer  this  service,  and  he  feels  as  if  it  were  a 
considerable  one.  Every  great  poet  has  something 
that  he  does  supremely  well,  and  when  you  come 
upon  Tennyson  at  his  best  you  feel  that  you  are 
dealing  with  poetry  at  its  highest.  One  of  the 
best  passages  in  Queen  Mary — the  only  one,  it 
seems  to  me,  very  sensibly  warmed  by  the  "fire" 
commemorated  by  the  London  Times — is  the  pas 
sionate  monologue  of  Mary  when  she  feels  what  she 
supposes  to  be  the  intimations  of  maternity: 

"  He  hath  awaked,  he  hath  awaked ! 
He  stirs  within  the  darkness! 
Oh  Philip,  husband!  how  thy  love  to  mine 
Will  cling  more  close,  and  those  bleak  manners  thaw, 


170  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

That  make  me  shamed  and  tongne-tied  in  my  love. 

The  second  Prince  of  Peace  — 

The  great  unborn  defender  of  the  Faith, 

Who  will  avenge  me  of  mine  enemies  — 

He  comes,  and  my  star  rises. 

The  stormy  Wyatts  and  Northumberlands 

And  proud  ambitions  of  Elizabeth, 

And  all  her  fiercest  partisans,  are  pale 

Before  my  star! 

His  sceptre  shall  go  forth  from  Ind  to  Ind ! 

His  sword  shall  hew  the  heretic  peoples  down ! 

His  faith  shall  clothe  the  world  that  will  be  his, 

Like  universal  air  and  sunshine!     Open, 

Ye  everlasting  gates!     The  King  is  here! — 

My  star,  my  son !  " 

That  is  very  fine,  and  its  broken  verses  and  un 
even  movement  have  great  felicity  and  suggestive- 
ness.  But  their  magic  is  as  nothing,  surely,  to 
the  magic  of  such  a  passage  as  this : 

"  Yet  hold  me  not  for  ever  in  thine  East ; 
How  can  my  nature  longer  mix  with  thine? 
Coldly  thy  rosy  shadows  bathe  me,  cold 
Are  all  thy  lights,  and  cold  my  wrinkled  feet 
Upon  thy  glimmering  thresholds,  where  the  stream 
Floats  up  from  those  dim  fields  about  the  homes 
Of  happy  men  that  have  the  power  to  die, 
And  grassy  barrows  of  the  happier  dead. 
Release  me  and  restore  me  to  the  ground; 
Thou  seest  all  things,  thou  wilt  see  my  grave; 
Thou  wilt  renew  thy  beauty  morn  by  morn; 


TENNYSON'S  DRAMA  171 

I,  earth  in  earth,  forget  these  empty  courts, 
And  thee  returning  on  thy  silver  wheels." 

In  these  beautiful  lines  from  "Tithonus"  there 
is  a  purity  of  tone,  an  inspiration,  a  something 
sublime  and  exquisite,  which  is  easily  within  the 
compass  of  Mr.  Tennyson's  usual  manner  at  its 
highest,  but  which  is  not  easily  achieved  by  any 
really  dramatic  verse.  It  is  poised  and  stationary, 
like  a  bird  whose  wings  have  borne  him  high,  but 
the  beauty  of  whose  movement  is  less  in  great 
ethereal  sweeps  and  circles  than  in  the  way  he 
hangs  motionless  in  the  blue  air,  with  only  a 
vague  tremor  of  his  pinions.  Even  if  the  idea  with 
Tennyson  were  more  largely  dramatic  than  it 
usually  is,  the  immobility,  as  we  must  call  it,  of  his 
phrase  would  always  defeat  the  dramatic  inten 
tion.  When  he  wishes  to  represent  movement,  the 
phrase  always  seems  to  me  to  pause  and  slowly 
pivot  upon  itself,  or  at  most  to  move  backward. 
I  do  not  know  whether  the  reader  recognizes  the 
peculiarity  to  which  I  allude ;  one  has  only  to  open 
Tennyson  almost  at  random  to  find  an  example  of 
it: 

"  For  once  when  Arthur,  walking  all  alone, 
Vext  at  a  rumour  rife  about  the  Queen, 
Had  met  her,  Vivien  being  greeted  fair, 
Would  fain  have  wrought  upon  his  cloudy  mood 
With  reverent  eyes  mock-loyal,  shaken  voice, 
And  fluttered  adoration." 


172  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

That  perhaps  is  a  subtle  illustration;  the  allu 
sion  to  Teolin's  dog  in  "Aylmer's  Field"  is  a 
franker  one: 

"his  old  Newfoundlands,  when  they  ran 

To  lose  him  at  the  stables;  for  he  rose, 
Two-footed,  at  the  limit  of  his  chain, 
Roaring  to  make  a  third." 

What  these  pictures  present  is  not  the  action  it 
self,  but  the  poet's  complex  perception  of  it;  it 
seems  hardly  more  vivid  and  genuine  than  the  sus 
tained  posturings  of  brilliant  tableaux  vivants. 
"With  the  poets  who  are  natural  chroniclers  of 
movement,  the  words  fall  into  their  places  as  with 
some  throw  of  the  dice,  which  fortune  should  al 
ways  favour.  With  Scott  and  Byron  they  leap  into 
the  verse  a  pieds  joints,  and  shake  it  with  their 
coming;  with  Tennyson  they  arrive  slowly  and 
settle  cautiously  into  their  attitudes,  after  having 
well  scanned  the  locality.  In  consequence  they 
are  generally  exquisite,  and  make  exquisite  com 
binations;  but  the  result  is  intellectual  poetry  and 
not  passionate — poetry  which,  if  the  term  is  not 
too  pedantic,  one  may  qualify  as  static  poetry. 
Any  scene  of  violence  represented  by  Tennyson  is 
always  singularly  limited  and  compressed;  it  is 
reduced  to  a  few  elements — refined  to  a  single 
statuesque  episode.  There  are,  for  example,  sev 
eral  descriptions  of  tournaments  and  combats  in 


TENNYSON'S  DRAMA  173 

the  Idyls  of  the  King.  They  are  all  most  beau 
tiful,  but  they  are  all  curiously  delicate.  One  gets 
no  sense  of  the  din  and  shock  of  battle ;  one  seems 
to  be  looking  at  a  bas  relief  of  two  contesting 
knights  in  chiselled  silver,  on  a  priceless  piece  of 
plate.  They  belong  to  the  same  family  as  that 
charming  description,  in  Hawthorne 's  MarUe  Faun, 
of  the  sylvan  dance  of  Donatello  and  Miriam  in 
the  Borghese  gardens.  Hawthorne  talks  of  the 
freedom  and  frankness  of  their  mirth  and  revelry ; 
what  we  seem  to  see  is  a  solemn  frieze  in  stone 
along  the  base  of  a  monument.  These  are  the  nat 
ural  fruits  of  geniuses  who  are  of  the  brooding 
rather  than  the  impulsive  order.  I  do  not  mean 
to  say  that  here  and  there  Tennyson  does  not  give 
us  a  couplet  in  which  motion  seems  reflected  with 
out  being  made  to  tarry.  I  open  ''Enoch  Arden" 
at  hazard,  and  I  read  of  Enoch's  ship  that 

"  at  first  indeed 


Thro'  many  a  fair  sea-circle,  day  by  day, 
Scarce  rocking,  her  full-busted  figure-head 
Stared  o'er  the  ripple  feathering  from  her  bows." 

I  turn  the  page  and  read  of 

"  The  myriad  shriek  of  wheeling  ocean  fowl, 
The  league-long  roller  thundering  on  the  reef, 
The  moving  whisper  of  huge  trees  that  branched 
And  blossomed  in  the  zenith"; 


174  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

of 

"  The  sunrise  broken  into  scarlet  shafts 
Among  the  palms  and  ferns  and  precipices; 
The  blaze  upon  the  waters  to  the  east; 
The  blaze  upon  his  island  overhead; 
The  blaze  upon  the  waters  to  the  west; 
Then    the   great   stars   that   globed   themselves    in 

Heaven, 

The  hollower-bellowing  Ocean,  and  again 
The  scarlet  shafts  of  sunrise." 

These  lines  represent  movement  on  the  grand 
natural  scale — taking  place  in  that  measured,  ma 
jestic  fashion  which,  at  any  given  moment,  seems 
identical  with  permanence.  One  is  almost  ashamed 
to  quote  Tennyson;  one  can  hardly  lay  one's  hand 
on  a  passage  that  does  not  form  part  of  the  com 
mon  stock  of  reference  and  recitation.  Passages 
of  the  more  impulsive  and  spontaneous  kind  will 
of  course  chiefly  be  found  in  his  lyrics  and  rhymed 
verses  (though  rhyme  would  at  first  seem  but 
another  check  upon  his  freedom)  ;  and  passages  of 
the  kind  to  which  I  have  been  calling  attention, 
chiefly  in  his  narrative  poems,  in  the  Idyls  gen 
erally,  and  especially  in  the  later  ones,  while  the 
words  strike  one  as  having  been  pondered  and 
collated  with  an  almost  miserly  care. 

But  a  man  has  always  the  qualities  of  his  de 
fects,  and  if  Tennyson  is  what  I  have  called  a 
static  poet,  he  at  least  represents  repose  and  still- 


TENNYSON'S  DRAMA  175 

ness  and  the  fixedness  of  things,  with  a  splendour 
that  no  poet  has  surpassed.  We  all  of  this  genera 
tion  have  lived  in  such  intimacy  with  him,  and 
made  him  so  much  part  of  our  regular  intellectual 
meat  and  drink,  that  it  requires  a  certain  effort 
to  hold  him  off  at  the  proper  distance  for  scanning 
him.  We  need  to  cease  mechanically  murmuring 
his  lines,  so  that  we  may  hear  them  speak  for  them 
selves. 

Few  persons  who  have  grown  up  within  the  last 
forty  years  but  have  passed  through  the  regular 
Tennysonian  phase;  happy  few  who  have  paid  it 
a  merely  passive  tribute,  and  not  been  moved  to 
commit  their  emotions  to  philosophic  verse,  in  the 
metre  of  "In  Memoriam"!  The  phase  has  lasted 
longer  with  some  persons  than  with  others;  but  it 
will  not  be  denied  that  with  the  generation  at  large 
it  has  visibly  declined.  The  young  persons  of 
twenty  now  read  Tennyson  (though,  as  we  im 
agine,  with  a  fervour  less  intense  than  that  which 
prevailed  twenty  years  ago) ;  but  the  young  per 
sons  of  thirty  read  Browning  and  Dante  Rossetti, 
and  Omar  Kheyam — and  are  also  sometimes  heard 
to  complain  that  poetry  is  dead  and  that  there  is 
nothing  nowadays  to  read. 

We  have  heard  Tennyson  called  "dainty"  so 
often,  we  have  seen  so  many  allusions  to  the  ' '  Ten 
nysonian  trick,"  we  have  been  so  struck,  in  a  cer 
tain  way,  with  M.  Taine's  remarkable  portrait  of 


176       EARLY  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

the  poet,  in  contrast  to  that  of  Alfred  de  Musset, 
that  every  one  who  has  anything  of  a  notion  of 
keeping  abreast  of  what  is  called  the  ''culture  of  the 
time"  is  rather  shy  of  making  an  explicit,  or  even 
a  serious  profession  of  admiration  for  his  earlier 
idol.  It  has  long  been  the  fashion  to  praise  Byron, 
if  one  praises  him  at  all,  with  an  apologetic  smile ; 
and  Tennyson  has  been,  I  think,  in  a  measure, 
tacitly  classed  with  the  author  of  "Childe  Harold" 
as  a  poet  whom  one  thinks  most  of  while  one 's  taste 
is  immature. 

This  is  natural  enough,  I  suppose,  and  the  taste 
of  the  day  must  travel  to  its  opportunity's  end. 
But  I  do  not  believe  that  Byron  has  passed,  by  any 
means,  and  I  do  not  think  that  Tennyson  has  been 
proved  to  be  a  secondary  or  a  tertiary  poet.  If 
he  is  not  in  the  front  rank,  it  is  hard  to  see  what 
it  is  that  constitutes  exquisite  quality.  There  are 
poets  of  a  larger  compass;  he  has  not  the  passion 
of  Shelley  nor  the  transcendent  meditation  of 
Wordsworth ;  but  his  inspiration,  in  its  own  current, 
is  surely  as  pure  as  theirs.  He  depicts  the  assured 
beauties  of  life,  the  things  that  civilisation  has 
gained  and  permeated,  and  he  does  it  with  an  in 
effable  delicacy  of  imagination.  Only  once,  as  it 
seems  to  me  (at  the  close  of  "Maud"),  has  he 
struck  the  note  of  irrepressible  emotion,  and  ap 
peared  to  say  the  thing  that  must  be  said  at  the 
moment,  at  any  cost.  For  the  rest,  his  verse  is  the 


TENNYSON'S  DRAMA  177 

verse  of  leisure,  of  luxury,  of  contemplation,  of  a 
faculty  that  circumstances  have  helped  to  become 
fastidious;  but  this  leaves  it  a  wide  province — a 
province  that  it  fills  with  a  sovereign  splendour. 

When  a  poet  is  such  an  artist  as  Tennyson,  such 
an  unfaltering,  consummate  master,  it  is  no  shame 
to  surrender  one's  self  to  his  spell.  Reading  him 
over  here  and  there,  as  I  have  been  doing,  I  have 
received  an  extraordinary  impression  of  talent — 
talent  ripened  and  refined,  and  passed,  with  a  hun 
dred  incantations,  through  the  crucible  of  taste. 
The  reader  is  in  thoroughly  good  company,  and  if 
the  language  is  to  a  certain  extent  that  of  a  coterie, 
the  coterie  can  offer  convincing  evidence  of  its 
right  to  be  exclusive.  Its  own  tone  is  exquisite; 
listen  to  it,  and  you  will  desire  nothing  more. 

Tennyson's  various  Idyls  have  been  in  some  de 
gree  discredited  by  insincere  imitations,  and  in  some 
degree,  perhaps,  by  an  inevitable  lapse  of  sympathy 
on  the  part  of  some  people  from  what  appears  their 
falsetto  pitch.  That  King  Arthur,  in  the  great 
ones  of  the  series,  is  rather  a  prig,  and  that  he 
couldn't  have  been  all  the  poet  represents  him  with 
out  being  a  good  deal  of  a  hypocrite;  that  the  poet 
himself  is  too  monotonously  unctuous,  and  that  in 
relating  the  misdeeds  of  Launcelot  and  Guinevere 
he  seems,  like  the  lady  in  the  play  in  ' '  Hamlet, ' '  to 
"protest  too  much"  for  wholesomeness — all  this  has 
been  often  said,  and  said  with  abundant  force.  But 


178  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

there  is  a  way  of  reading  the  Idyls,  one  and  all, 
and  simply  enjoying  them.  It  has  been,  just  now, 
the  way  of  the  writer  of  these  lines ;  he  does  not  ex 
actly  know  what  may  be  gained  by  taking  the  other 
way,  but  he  feels  as  if  there  were  a  pitiful  IOSP  in 
not  taking  this  one.  If  one  surrenders  one's  sense 
to  their  perfect  picturesqueness,  it  is  the  most 
charming  poetry  in  the  world.  The  prolonged,  deli 
cate,  exquisite  sustentation  of  the  pictorial  tone 
seems  to  me  a  marvel  of  ingenuity  and  fancy.  It 
appeals  to  a  highly  cultivated  sense,  but  what  en 
joyment  is  so  keen  as  that  of  the  cultivated  sense 
when  its  finer  nerve  is  really  touched?  The 
Idyls  all  belong  to  the  poetry  of  association;  but 
before  they  were  written  we  had  yet  to  learn  how 
finely  association  could  be  analysed,  and  how  softly 
its  chords  could  be  played  upon.  When  Enoch 
Arden  came  back  from  his  desert  island, 

"  He  like  a  lover  down  through  all  his  blood 
Drew  in  the  dewy,  meadowy  morning  breath 
Of  England,  blown  across  her  ghostly  wall." 

Tennyson's  solid  verbal  felicities,  his  unerring 
sense  of  the  romantic,  his  acute  perception  of  every 
thing  in  nature  that  may  contribute  to  his  fund  of 
exquisite  imagery,  his  refinement,  his  literary  tone, 
his  aroma  of  English  lawns  and  English  libraries, 
the  whole  happy  chance  of  his  selection  of  the 
Arthurian  legends — all  this,  and  a  dozen  minor 


TENNYSON'S  DRAMA  179 

graces  which  it  would  take  almost  his  own  ' '  dainti 
ness"  to  formulate,  make  him,  it  seems  to  me,  the 
most  charming  of  the  entertaining  poets.  It  is  as 
an  entertaining  poet  I  chiefly  think  of  him;  his 
morality,  at  moments,  is  certainly  importunate 
enough,  but  elevated  as  it  is,  it  never  seems  to  me 
of  so  fine  a  distillation  as  his  imagery.  As  a  didac 
tic  creation  I  do  not  greatly  care  for  King  Arthur ; 
but  as  a  fantastic  one  he  is  infinitely  remunerative. 
He  is  doubtless  not,  as  an  intellectual  conception, 
massive  enough  to  be  called  a  great  figure ;  but  he  is, 
picturesquely,  so  admirably  self-consistent,  that  the 
reader's  imagination  is  quite  willing  to  turn  its 
back,  if  need  be,  on  his  judgment,  and  give  itself 
up  to  idle  enjoyment. 

As  regards  Tennyson's  imagery,  anything  that 
one  quotes  in  illustration  is,  as  I  have  said,  cer 
tain  to  be  extremely  familiar;  but  even  familiarity 
can  hardly  dull  the  beauty  of  such  a  touch  as  that 
about  Merlin's  musings: 

"  So  dark  a  forethought  rolled  about  his  brain, 
As  on  a  dull  day  in  an  Ocean  cave 
The  blind  wave  feeling  round  his  long  sea-hall 
In  silence." 

Or  of  that  which  puts  in  vivid  form  the  estrange 
ment  of  Enid  and  Geraint: 

"  The  two  remained 
Apart  by  all  the  chamber's  width,  and  mute 


180  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

As  creatures  voiceless  through  the  fault  of  birth, 
Or  two  wild  men,  supporters  of  a  shield, 
Painted,  who  stare  at  open  space,  nor  glance 
The  one  at  other,  parted  by  the  shield." 

Happy,  in  short,  the  poet  who  can  offer  his  heroine 
for  her  dress 

• "  a  splendid  silk  of  foreign  loom, 

Where,  like  a  shoaling  sea,  the  lovely  blue 
Played  into  green." 

I  have  touched  here  only  upon  Tennyson's  nar 
rative  poems,  because  they  seemed  most  in  order 
in  any  discussion  of  the  author's  dramatic  faculty. 
They  cannot  be  said  to  place  it  in  an  eminent 
light,  and  they  remind  one  more  of  the  courage 
than  of  the  discretion  embodied  in  Queen  Mary. 
Lovely  pictures  of  things  standing,  with  a  sort  of 
conscious  stillness,  for  their  poetic  likeness,  meas 
ured  speeches,  full  of  delicate  harmonies  and  curi 
ous  cadences — these  things  they  contain  in  plenty, 
but  little  of  that  liberal  handling  of  cross-speaking 
passion  and  humour  which,  with  a  strong  construc 
tive  faculty,  we  regard  as  the  sign  of  a  genuine 
dramatist. 

The  dramatic  form  seems  to  me  of  all  literary 
forms  the  very  noblest.  I  have  so  extreme  a  relish 
for  it  that  I  am  half  afraid  to  trust  myself  to 
praise  it,  lest  I  should  seem  to  be  merely  rhap 
sodizing.  But  to  be  really  noble  it  must  be  quite 


TENNYSON'S  DRAMA  181 

itself,  and  between  a  poor  drama  and  a  fine  one 
there  is,  I  think,  a  wider  interval  than  anywhere 
else  in  the  scale  of  success.  A  sequence  of 
speeches  headed  by  proper  names — a  string  of  dia 
logues  broken  into  acts  and  scenes — does  not  con 
stitute  a  drama;  not  even  when  the  speeches  are 
very  clever  and  the  dialogue  bristles  with 
"  points. " 

The  fine  thing  in  a  real  drama,  generally  speak 
ing,  is  that,  more  than  any  other  work  of  literary 
art,  it  needs  a  masterly  structure.  It  needs  to  be 
shaped  and  fashioned  and  laid  together,  and  this 
process  makes  a  demand  upon  an  artist's  rarest 
gifts.  He  must  combine  and  arrange,  interpolate 
and  eliminate,  play  the  joiner  with  the  most  atten 
tive  skill;  and  yet  at  the  end  effectually  bury  his 
tools  and  his  sawdust,  and  invest  his  elaborate 
skeleton  with  the  smoothest  and  most  polished 
integument.  The  five-act  drama — serious  or  hu 
mourous,  poetic  or  prosaic — is  like  a  box  of  fixed 
dimensions  and  inelastic  material,  into  which  a 
mass  of  precious  things  are  to  be  packed  away.  It 
is  a  problem  in  ingenuity  and  a  problem  of  the 
most  interesting  kind.  The  precious  things  in 
question  seem  out  of  all  proportion  to  the  compass 
of  the  receptacle;  but  the  artist  has  an  assurance 
that  with  patience  and  skill  a  place  may  be  made 
for  each,  and  that  nothing  need  be  clipped  or 
crumpled,  squeezed  or  damaged.  The  false 


182  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

dramatist  either  knocks  out  the  sides  of  his  box, 
or  plays  the  deuce  with  the  contents ;  the  real  one 
gets  down  on  his  knees,  disposes  of  his  goods  tenta 
tively,  this,  that,  and  the  other  way,  loses  his 
temper  but  keeps  his  ideal,  and  at  last  rises  in 
triumph,  having  packed  his  coffer  in  the  one  way 
that  is  mathematically  right.  It  closes  perfectly, 
and  the  lock  turns  with  a  click;  between  one  ob 
ject  and  another  you  cannot  insert  the  point  of  a 
penknife. 

.To  work  successfully  beneath  a  few  grave,  rigid 
laws,  is  always  a  strong  man's  highest  ideal  of  suc 
cess.  The  reader  cannot  be  sure  how  deeply  con 
scious  Mr.  Tennyson  has  been  of  the  laws  of  the 
drama,  but  it  would  seem  as  if  he  had  not  very 
attentively  pondered  them.  In  a  play,  certainly, 
the  subject  is  of  more  importance  than  in  any 
other  work  of  art.  Infelicity,  triviality,  vagueness 
of  subject,  may  be  outweighed  in  a  poem,  a  novel, 
or  a  picture,  by  charm  of  manner,  by  ingenuity 
of  execution;  but  in  a  drama  the  subject  is  of  the 
essence  of  the  work — it  is  the  work.  If  it  is  fee 
ble,  the  work  can  have  no  force;  if  it  is  shapeless, 
the  work  must  be  amorphous. 

Queen  Mary,  I  think,  has  this  fundamental  weak 
ness  ;  it  would  be  very  hard  to  say  what  its  subject 
is.  Strictly  speaking,  the  drama  has  none.  To 
the  statement,  "It  is  the  reign  of  the  elder  daugh 
ter  of  Henry  VIIL,"  it  seems  to  me  very  nearly 


TENNYSON'S  DRAMA  183 

fair  to  reply  that  that  is  not  a  subject.  I  do  not 
mean  to  say  that  a  consummate  dramatist  could 
not  resolve  it  into  one,  but  the  presumption  is  al 
together  against  it.  It  cannot  be  called  an  in 
trigue,  nor  treated  as  one;  it  tends  altogether  to 
expansion;  whereas  a  genuine  dramatic  subject 
should  tend  to  concentration. 

Madame  Eistori,  that  accomplished  tragedienne, 
has  for  some  years  been  carrying  about  the  world 
with  her  a  piece  of  writing,  punctured  here  and 
there  with  curtain-falls,  which  she  presents  to  nu 
merous  audiences  as  a  tragedy  embodying  the  his 
tory  of  Queen  Elizabeth.  The  thing  is  worth  men 
tioning  only  as  an  illustration ;  it  is  from  the  hand 
of  a  prolific  Italian  purveyor  of  such  wares,  and  is 
as  bad  as  need  be.  Many  of  the  persons  who  read 
these  lines  will  have  seen  it,  and  will  remember  it 
as  a  mere  bald  sequence  of  anecdotes,  roughly  cast 
into  dialogue.  It  is  not  incorrect  to  say  that,  as 
regards  form,  Mr.  Tennyson's  drama  is  of  the  same 
family  as  the  historical  tragedies  of  Signor  Giaco- 
metti.  It  is  simply  a  dramatised  chronicle,  without 
an  internal  structure,  taking  its  material  in  pieces, 
as  history  hands  them  over,  and  working  each  one 
up  into  an  independent  scene — usually  with  rich 
ability.  It  has  no  shape ;  it  is  cast  into  no  mould ; 
it  has  neither  beginning,  middle,  nor  end,  save  the 
chronological  ones. 

A  work  of  this  sort  may  have  a  great  many  merits 


184  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

(those  of  Queen  Mary  are  numerous),  but  it  can 
not  have  the  merit  of  being  a  drama.  We  have,  in 
deed,  only  to  turn  to  Shakespeare  to  see  how  much 
of  pure  dramatic  interest  may  be  infused  into  an 
imperfect  dramatic  form.  Henry  IV.  and  the  oth 
ers  of  its  group,  Richard  III.,  Henry  VIII. ,  An 
tony  and  Cleopatra,  Julius  Ccesar,  are  all  chron 
icles  in  dialogue,  are  all  simply  Holinshed  and  Plu 
tarch  transferred  into  immortal  verse.  They  are 
magnificent  because  Shakespeare  could  do  nothing 
weak;  but  all  Shakespearian  as  they  are,  they  are 
not  models;  the  models  are  Hamlet  and  Othello, 
Macbeth  and  Lear.  Tennyson  is  not  Shakespeare, 
but  in  everything  he  had  done  hitherto  there  had 
been  an  essential  perfection,  and  we  are  sorry  that, 
in  the  complete  maturity  of  his  talent,  proposing  to 
write  a  drama,  he  should  have  chosen  the  easy  way 
rather  than  the  hard. 

He  chose,  however,  a  period  out  of  which  a  com 
pact  dramatic  subject  of  the  richest  interest  might 
well  have  been  wrought.  For  this,  of  course,  con 
siderable  invention  would  have  been  needed,  and 
Mr.  Tennyson  had  apparently  no  invention  to  bring 
to  his  task.  He  has  embroidered  cunningly  the 
groundwork  offered  him  by  Mr.  Froude,  but  he  has 
contributed  no  new  material.  The  field  offers  a 
great  stock  of  dramatic  figures,  and  one's  imagi 
nation  kindles  as  one  thinks  of  the  multifarious 
combinations  into  which  they  might  have  been  cast. 


TENNYSON'S  DRAMA  185 

We  do  not  pretend  of  course  to  say  in  detail  what 
Mr.  Tennyson  might  have  done ;  we  simply  risk  the 
affirmation  that  he  might  have  wrought  a  somewhat 
denser  tissue.  History  certainly  would  have  suf 
fered,  but  poetry  would  have  gained,  and  he  is  writ 
ing  poetry  and  not  history.  As  his  drama  stands, 
we  take  it  that  he  does  not  pretend  to  have  deep 
ened  our  historic  light. 

Psychologically,  picturesquely,  the  persons  in  the 
foreground  of  Mary's  reign  constitute  a  most  im 
pressive  and  interesting  group.  The  imagination 
plays  over  it  importunately,  and  wearies  itself  with 
scanning  the  outlines  and  unlighted  corners.  Mary 
herself  unites  a  dozen  strong  dramatic  elements — 
in  her  dark  religious  passion,  her  unrequited  con 
jugal  passion,  her  mixture  of  the  Spanish  and  Eng 
lish  natures,  her  cruelty  and  her  conscience,  her 
high-handed  rule  and  her  constant  insecurity. 
With  her  dark  figure  lighted  luridly  by  perpetual 
martyr-fires,  and  made  darker  still  by  the  presence 
of  her  younger  sister,  radiant  with  the  promise  of 
England's  coming  greatness;  with  Lady  Jane  Grey 
groping  for  the  block  behind  her;  her  cold  fanatic 
of  a  husband  beside  her,  as  we  know  him  by  Velas 
quez  (with  not  a  grain  of  fanaticism  to  spare  for 
her) ;  with  her  subtle  ecclesiastical  cousin  Pole  on 
the  other  side,  with  evil  counsellors  and  dogged 
martyrs  and  a  threatening  people  all  around  her, 
and  with  a  lonely,  dreary,  disappointed  and  un- 


186  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

lamented  death  before  her,  she  is  a  subject  made  to 
the  hand  of  a  poet  who  should  know  how  to  mingle 
cunningly  his  darker  shades.  Tennyson  has  elabo 
rated  her  figure  in  a  way  that  is  often  masterly ;  it 
is  a  success — the  greatest  success  of  the  poem.  It 
is  compounded  in  his  hands  of  very  subtle  elements, 
and  he  keeps  them  from  ever  becoming  gross. 

The  Mary  of  his  pages  is  a  complex  personage, 
and  not  what  she  might  so  easily  become — a  mere 
picturesque  stalking-horse  of  melodrama.  The  art 
with  which  he  has  still  kept  her  sympathetic  and 
human,  at  the  same  time  that  he  has  darkened  the 
shadows  in  her  portrait  to  the  deepest  tone  that 
he  had  warrant  for,  is  especially  noticeable.  It  is 
not  in  Mr.  Tennyson's  pages  that  Mary  appears  for 
the  first  time  in  the  drama ;  she  gives  her  name  to 
a  play  of  Victor  Hugo 's  dating  from  the  year  1833 
— the  prime  of  the  author's  career.  I  have  just 
been  reading  over  Marie  Tudor,  and  it  has  sug 
gested  a  good  many  reflections.  I  think  it  probable 
that  many  of  the  readers  of  Queen  Mary  would  be 
quite  unable  to  peruse  Victor  Hugo 's  consummately 
unpleasant  production  to  the  end;  but  they  would 
admit,  I  suppose,  that  a  person  who  had  had  the 
stomach  to  do  so  might  have  something  particular 
to  say  about  it. 

If  one  had  an  eye  for  contrasts,  the  contrast  be 
tween  these  two  works  is  extremely  curious.  I  said 
just  now  that  Tennyson  had  brought  no  invention 


TENNYSON'S  DRAMA  187 

to  his  task;  but  it  may  be  said,  on  the  other  side, 
that  Victor  Hugo  has  brought  altogether  too  much. 
If  Tennyson  has  been  unduly  afraid  of  remodelling 
history,  the  author  of  Marie  Tudor  has  known  no 
such  scruples;  he  has  slashed  into  the  sacred  chart 
with  the  shears  of  a  romantique  of  1830.  Al 
though  Tennyson,  in  a  general  way,  is  an  essen 
tially  picturesque  poet,  his  picturesqueness  is  of  an 
infinitely  milder  type  than  that  of  Victor  Hugo; 
the  one  ends  where  the  other  begins.  With  Victor 
Hugo  the  horrible  is  always  the  main  element  of 
the  picturesque,  and  the  beautiful  and  the  tender 
are  rarely  introduced  save  to  give  it  relief.  In 
Marie  Tudor  they  cannot  be  said  to  be  introduced 
at  all;  the  drama  is  one  masterly  compound  of 
abominable  horror;  horror  for  horror's  sake — for 
the  sake  of  chiaroscuro,  of  colour,  of  the  footlights, 
of  the  actors ;  not  in  the  least  in  any  visible  interest 
of  human  nature,  of  moral  verity,  of  the  discrimi 
nation  of  character. 

"What  Victor  Hugo  has  here  made  of  the  rigid, 
strenuous,  pitiable  English  queen  seems  to  me  a 
good  example  of  how  little  the  handling  of  sinister 
passions  sometimes  costs  a  genius  of  his  type — how 
little  conviction  or  deep  reflection  goes  with  it. 
There  was  a  Mary  of  a  far  keener  tragic  interest 
than  the  epigrammatic  Messalina  whom  he  has  por 
trayed;  but  her  image  was  established  in  graver 
and  finer  colours,  and  he  passes  jauntily  beside  it, 


188  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

without  suspecting  its  capacity.  Marie  Tudor  is  a 
lascivious  termagant  who  amuses  herself,  first,  with 
caressing  an  Italian  adventurer,  then  with  slapping 
his  face,  and  then  with  dabbling  in  his  blood;  but 
we  do  not  really  see  why  the  author  should  have 
given  his  heroine  a  name  which  history  held  in  her 
more  or  less  sacred  keeping;  one's  interest  in  the 
drama  would  have  been  more  comfortable  if  the 
persons,  in  their  impossible  travesty,  did  not  pre 
sent  themselves  as  old  friends.  It  is  true  that  the 
11  Baron  of  Dinasmonddy"  can  hardly  be  called  an 
old  friend ;  but  he  is  at  least  as  familiar  as  the  Earl 
of  Clanbrassil,  the  Baron  of  Darmouth  in  Devon 
shire,  and  Lord  South-Repps. 

Marie  Tudor,  then  has  little  to  do  with  nature 
and  nothing  with  either  history  or  morality;  and 
yet,  without  a  paradox,  it  has  some  very  strong 
qualities.  It  is  at  any  rate  a  genuine  drama,  and 
it  succeeds  thoroughly  well  in  what  it  attempts. 
It  is  moulded  and  proportioned  to  a  definite  scenic 
end,  and  never  falters  in  its  course.  To  read  it 
just  after  you  have  read  Queen  Mary  brings  out  its 
merits,  as  well  as  its  defects;  and  if  the  contrast 
makes  you  inhale  with  a  double  satisfaction  the 
clearer  moral  atmosphere  of  the  English  work,  it 
leads  you  also  to  reflect  with  some  gratitude  that 
dramatic  tradition,  in  our  modern  era,  has  not  re 
mained  solely  in  English  hands. 

Mr.   Tennyson  has  very   frankly  fashioned  his 


TENNYSON'S  DRAMA  189 

play  upon  the  model  of  the  Shakespearian  "  his 
tories.  ' '  He  has  given  us  the  same  voluminous  list 
of  characters;  he  has  made  the  division  into  acts 
merely  arbitrary;  he  has  introduced  low-life  inter 
locutors,  talking  in  archaic  prose ;  and  whenever  the 
fancy  has  taken  him,  he  has  culled  his  idioms  and 
epithets  from  the  Shakespearian  vocabulary.  As 
regards  this  last  point,  he  has  shown  all  the  tact 
and  skill  that  were  to  be  expected  from  so  approved 
a  master  of  language.  The  prose  scenes  are  all  of 
a  quasi-humourous  description,  and  they  emulate 
the  queer  jocosities  of  Shakespeare  more  success 
fully  than  seemed  probable ;  though  it  was  not  to  be 
forgotten  that  the  author  of  the  " Palace  of  Art" 
was  also  the  author  of  the  "Northern  Farmer." 
These  few  lines  might  have  been  taken  straight 
from  Henry  IV.  or  Henry  VIII.: 

"  No ;  we  know  that  you  be  come  to  kill  the  Queen,  and 
we'll  pray  for  you  all  on  our  bended  knees.  But  o' 
God's  mercy,  don't  you  kill  the  Queen  here,  Sir  Thomas ; 
look  ye,  here's  little  Dickon,  and  little  Robin,  and  little 
Jenny  —  though  she's  but  a  side  cousin  —  and  all,  on 
our  knees,  we  pray  you  to  kill  the  Queen  farther  off, 
Sir  Thomas." 

The  poet,  however,  is  modern  when  he  chooses 
to  be: 

"Action  and  reaction, 
The  miserable  see-saw  of  our  child-world, 
Make  us  despise  it  at  odd  hours,  my  Lord." 


190  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

That  reminds  one  less  of  the  Elizabethan  than  of 
the  Victorian  era.  Mr.  Tennyson  has  desired  to 
give  a  general  picture  of  the  time,  to  reflect  all  its 
leading  elements  and  commemorate  its  salient  epi 
sodes.  From  this  point  of  view  England  herself— 
England  struggling  and  bleeding  in  the  clutches  of 
the  Romish  wolf,  as  he  would  say — is  the  heroine  of 
the  drama.  This  heroine  is  very  nobly  and  vividly 
imaged,  and  we  feel  the  poet  to  be  full  of  a  retro 
active  as  well  as  a  present  patriotism.  It  is  a  plain 
Protestant  attitude  that  he  takes;  there  is  no  at 
tempt  at  analysis  of  the  Catholic  sense  of  the  situ 
ation;  it  is  quite  the  old  story  that  we  learned  in 
our  school-histories  as  children.  We  do  not  mean 
that  this  is  not  the  veracious  way  of  presenting  it ; 
but  we  notice  the  absence  of  that  tendency  to  place 
it  in  different  lights,  accumulate  pros  and  cons,  and 
plead  opposed  causes  in  the  interest  of  ideal  truth, 
which  would  have  been  so  obvious  if  Mr.  Browning 
had  handled  the  theme.  And  yet  Mr.  Tennyson 
has  been  large  and  liberal,  and  some  of  the  finest 
passages  in  the  poem  are  uttered  by  independent 
Catholics.  The  author  has  wished  to  give  a  hint 
of  everything,  and  he  has  admirably  divined  the 
anguish  of  mind  of  many  men  who  were  unpre 
pared  to  go  with  the  new  way  of  thinking,  and  yet 
were  scandalised  at  the  license  of  the  old — who 
were  willing  to  be  Catholics,  and  yet  not  willing 
to  be  delivered  over  to  Spain. 


TENNYSON'S  DRAMA  191 

Where  so  many  episodes  are  sketched,  few  of 
course  can  be  fully  developed ;  but  there  is  a  vivid 
manliness  of  the  classic  English  type  in  such  por 
traits  as  Lord  William  Howard  and  Sir  Ralph 
Bagenhall — poor  Sir  Ralph,  who  declares  that 

"  Far  liefer  had  I  in  my  country  hall 
Been  reading  some  old  book,  with  mine  old  hound 
Couch'd  at  my  hearth,  and  mine  old  flask  of  wine 
Beside  me," 

than  stand  as  he  does  in  the  thick  of  the  trouble 
of  the  time;  and  who  finally  is  brought  to  his  ac 
count  for  not  having  knelt  with  the  commons  to  the 
legate  of  Charles  V.  We  have  a  glimpse  of  Sir 
Thomas  Wyatt's  insurrection,  and  a  portrait  of 
that  robust  rebel,  who  was  at  the  same  time  an 
editor  of  paternal  sonnets — sonnets  of  a  father  who 
loved 

"  To  read  and  rhyme  in  solitary  fields, 
The  lark  above,  the  nightingale  below, 
And  answer  them  in  song." 

We  have  a  very  touching  report  of  Lady  Jane 
Grey's  execution,  and  we  assist  almost  directly  at 
the  sad  perplexities  of  poor  Cranmer's  eclipse.  We 
appreciate  the  contrast  between  the  fine  nerves  and 
many-sided  conscience  of  that  wavering  martyr, 
and  the  more  comfortable  religious  temperament  of 
Bonner  and  Gardiner — Bonner,  apt  "to  gorge  a 


192  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

heretic  whole,  roasted,  or  raw ; ' '  and  Gardiner,  who 
can  say, 

"  Fve  gulpt  it  down ;  Pm  wholly  for  the  Pope, 
Utterly  and  altogether  for  the  Pope, 
The  Eternal  Peter  of  the  changeless  chair, 
Crowned  slave  of  slaves  and  mitred  king  of  kings. 
God  upon  earth!    What  more?    What  would  you 
have?" 

Elizabeth  makes  several  appearances,  and  though 
they  are  brief,  the  poet  has  evidently  had  a  definite 
figure  in  his  mind's  eye.  On  a  second  reading  it 
betrays  a  number  of  fine  intentions.  The  circum 
spection  of  the  young  princess,  her  high  mettle,  her 
coquetry,  her  frankness,  her  coarseness,  are  all  rap 
idly  glanced  at.  Her  exclamation — 

"I  would  I  were  a  milkmaid, 
To  sing,  love,  marry,  churn,  brew,  bake,  and  die, 
And  have  my  simple  headstone  by  the  church, 
And  all  things  lived  and  ended  honestly  " — 

marks  one  limit  of  the  sketch;  and  the  other  is  in 
dicated  by  her  reply  to  Cecil  at  the  end  of  the 
drama,  on  his  declaring,  in  allusion  to  Mary,  that 
"  never  English  monarch  dying  left  England  so 
little": 

"  But  with  Cecil's  aid 
And  others',  if  our  person  be  secured 
From  traitor  stabs,  we  will  make  England  great ! " 


TENNYSON '8  DRAMA  193 

The  middle  term  is  perhaps  marked  by  her  re 
ception  of  the  functionary  who  comes  to  inform  her 
that  her  sister  bids  her  know  that  the  King  of  Spain 
desires  her  to  marry  Prince  Philibert  of  Savoy : 

"  I  thank  you  heartily,  sir, 
But  I  am  royal,  tho'  your  prisoner, 
And  God  hath  blessed  or  cursed  me  with  a  nose  — 
Your  boots  are  from  the  horses." 

The  drama  is  deficient  in  male  characters  of 
salient  interest.  Philip  is  vague  and  blank,  as  he 
is  evidently  meant  to  be,  and  Cardinal  Pole  is  a 
portrait  of  a  character  constitutionally  inapt  for 
breadth  of  action.  The  portrait  is  a  skilful  one, 
however,  and  expresses  forcibly  the  pangs  of  a  sen 
sitive  nature  entangled  in  trenchant  machinery. 
There  is  a  fine  scene  near  the  close  of  the  drama  in 
which  Pole  and  the  Queen — cousins,  old  friends, 
and  for  a  moment  betrothed  (Victor  Hugo  charac 
teristically  assumes  Mary  to  have  been  her  cousin 's 
mistress) — confide  to  each  other  their  weariness  and 
disappointment.  Mary  endeavours  to  console  the 
Cardinal,  but  he  has  only  grim  answers  for  her : 

"  Our  altar  is  a  mound  of  dead  men's  clay, 
Dug  from  the  grave  that  yawns  for  us  beyond ; 
And  there  is  one  Death  stands  beside  the  Groom, 
And  there  is  one  Death  stands  beside  the  Bride." 


194  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

Queen  Mary,  I  believe,  is  to  be  put  upon  the  stage 
next  winter  in  London.  I  do  not  pretend  to  fore 
cast  its  success  in  representation;  but  it  is  not  in 
discrete  to  say  that  it  will  suffer  from  the  absence 
of  a  man's  part  capable  of  being  made  striking. 
The  very  clever  Mr.  Henry  Irving  has,  we  are  told, 
offered  his  services,  presumably  to  play  either 
Philip  or  Pole.  If  he  imparts  any  great  relief  to 
either  figure,  it  will  be  a  signal  proof  of  talent. 
The  actress,  however,  to  whom  the  part  of  the 
Queen  is  allotted  will  have  every  reason  to  be  grate 
ful.  The  character  is  full  of  colour  and  made  to 
utter  a  number  of  really  dramatic  speeches.  When 
Renard  assures  her  that  Philip  is  only  waiting  for 
leave  of  the  Parliament  to  land  on  English  shores 
she  has  an  admirable  outbreak: 

"  God  change  the  pebble  which  his  kingly  foot 
First  presses  into  some  more  costly  stone 

Than  ever  blinded  eye.     I'll  have  one  mark  it 
And  bring  it  me.     I'll  have  it  burnished  firelike; 
I'll  set  it  round  with  gold,  with  pearl,  with  diamond. 
Let  the  great  angel  of  the  Church  come  with  him, 
Stand  on  the  deck  and  spread  his  wings  for  sail !  " 

Mary  is  not  only  vividly  conceived  from  within, 
but  her  physiognomy,  as  seen  from  without,  is  indi 
cated  with  much  pictorial  force : 

"  Did  you  mark  our  Queen  ? 
The  colour  freely  played  into  her  face, 


TENNYSON'S  DRAMA  195 

And  the  half  sight  which  makes  her  look  so  stern 
Seemed,  through  that  dim,  dilated  world  of  hers, 
To  read  our  faces." 

In  the  desolation  of  her  last  days,  when  she  bids 
her  attendants  go  to  her  sister  and 

"  Tell  her  to  come  and  close  my  dying  eyes 
And  wear  my  crown  and  dance  upon  my  grave," 

Mary,  to  attest  her  misery,  seats  herself  on  the 
ground,  like  Constance  in  "King  John";  and  the 
comment  of  one  of  her  women  hereupon  is  strik 
ingly  picturesque : 

"  Good  Lord !  how  grim  and  ghastly  looks  her  Grace, 
With  both  her  knees  drawn  upward  to  her  chin. 
There  was  an  old-world  tomb  beside  my  father's, 
And  this  was  opened,  and  the  dead  were  found 
Sitting,  and  in  this  fashion ;  she  looks  a  corpse." 

The  great  merit  of  Mr.  Tennyson's  drama,  how 
ever,  is  not  in  the  quotableness  of  certain  passages, 
but  in  the  thoroughly  elevated  spirit  of  the  whole. 
He  desired  to  make  us  feel  of  what  sound  manly 
stuff  the  Englishmen  of  that  Tudor  reign  of  terror 
needed  to  be,  and  his  verse  is  pervaded  by  the  echo 
of  their  deep-toned  refusal  to  abdicate  their  man 
hood.  The  temper  of  the  poem,  on  this  line,  is  so 
noble  that  the  critic  who  has  indulged  in  a  few 
strictures  as  to  matters  of  form  feels  as  if  he  had 
been  frivolous  and  niggardly.  I  nevertheless  ven- 


196  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

ture  to  add  in  conclusion  that  Queen  Mary  seems  to 
me  a  work  of  rare  ability  rather  than  great  inspira 
tion;  a  powerful  tour  de  force  rather  than  a  la 
bour  of  love.  But  though  it  is  not  the  best  of  a 
great  poet's  achievement,  only  a  great  poet  could 
have  written  it. 

n.  HAROLD 

The  author  of  Queen  Mary  seems  disposed  to 
show  us  that  that  work  was  not  an  accident,  but 
rather,  as  it  may  be  said,  an  incident  of  his 
literary  career.  The  incident  has  just  been  re 
peated,  though  Harold  has  come  into  the  world 
more  quietly  than  its  predecessor. 

It  is  singular  how  soon  the  public  gets  used  to 
unfamiliar  notions.  By  the  time  the  reader  has 
finished  Harold  he  has  almost  contracted  the  habit 
of  thinking  of  Mr.  Tennyson  as  a  writer  chiefly 
known  to  fame  by  ' '  dramas ' '  without  plots  and  dia 
logues  without  point.  This  impression  it  behooves 
him,  of  course,  to  shake  off  if  he  wishes  to  judge 
the  book  properly.  He  must  compare  the  author  of 
"Maud"  and  the  earlier  Idyls  with  the  great  poets, 
and  not  with  the  small.  Harold  would  be  a  respect 
able  production  for  a  writer  who  had  spent  his 
career  in  producing  the  same  sort  of  thing,  but  it 
is  a  somewhat  graceless  anomaly  in  the  record  of  a 
poet  whose  verse  has,  in  a  large  degree,  become  part 
of  the  civilisation  of  his  day. 


TENNYSON'S  DRAMA  197 

Queen  Mary  was  not,  on  the  whole,  pronounced 
a  success,  and  Harold,  roughly  speaking,  is  to 
Queen  Mary  what  that  work  is  to  the  author's  earl 
ier  masterpieces.  Harold  is  not  in  the  least  bad: 
it  contains  nothing  ridiculous,  unreasonable,  or  dis 
agreeable  ;  it  is  only  decidedly  weak,  decidedly  col 
ourless,  and  tame.  The  author's  inspiration  is  like 
a  fire  which  is  quietly  and  contentedly  burning  low. 
The  analogy  is  perfectly  complete.  The  hearth  is 
clean  swept  and  the  chimney-side  is  garnished  with 
its  habitual  furniture;  but  the  room  is  getting 
colder  and  colder,  and  the  occasional  little  flickers 
emitted  by  the  mild  embers  are  not  sufficient  to 
combat  the  testimony  of  the  poetical  thermometer. 
There  is  nothing  necessarily  harsh  in  this  judgment. 
Few  fires  are  always  at  a  blaze,  and  the  imagina 
tion,  which  is  the  most  delicate  machine  in  the 
world,  cannot  be  expected  to  serve  longer  than  a 
good  gold  repeater.  We  must  take  what  it  gives  us, 
in  every  case,  and  be  thankful.  Mr.  Tennyson  is 
perfectly  welcome  to  amuse  himself  with  listening 
to  the  fainter  tick  of  his  honoured  time-piece ;  it  is 
going  still,  unquestionably;  it  has  not  stopped. 
Only  we  may  without  rudeness  abstain  from  regu 
lating  our  engagements  by  the  indications  of  the  in 
strument. 

Harold  seems  at  first  to  have  little,  in  form,  that 
is  characteristic  of  the  author — little  of  the 
thoroughly  familiar  Tennysonian  quality.  Never- 


198  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

theless,  there  is  every  now  and  then  a  line  which 
arrests  the  ear  by  the  rhythm  and  cadence  which 
have  always  formed  the  chief  mystery  in  the  art 
of  imitating  the  Laureate. 
Meeting  in  the  early  pages  such  a  line  as 

"  What,  with  this  flaming  horror  overhead  ?  " 

we  should  suspect  we  were  reading  Tennyson  if 
we  did  not  know  it;  and  our  suspicion  would  be 
amply  confirmed  by  half  a  dozen  other  lines : 

"  Taken  the  rifted  pillars  of  the  wood." 
"  My  greyhounds  fleeting  like  a  beam  of  light." 
"  Suffer  a  stormless  shipwreck  in  the  pools." 
"  That  scared  the  dying  conscience  of  the  king." 

Harold  is  interesting  as  illustrating,  in  addition 
to  Queen  Mary,  Mr.  Tennyson 's  idea  of  what  makes 
a  drama.  A  succession  of  short  scenes,  detached 
from  the  biography  of  a  historical  character,  is,  ap 
parently,  to  his  sense  sufficient;  the  constructive 
side  of  the  work  is  thereby  reduced  to  a  primitive 
simplicity.  It  is  even  more  difficult  to  imagine  act 
ing  Harold  than  it  was  to  imagine  acting  Queen 
Mary;  and  it  is  probable  that  in  this  case  the  ex 
periment  will  not  be  tried.  And  yet  the  story,  or 
rather  the  historical  episode,  upon  which  Mr.  Ten- 


TENNYSON'S  DRAMA  199 

nyson  has  here  laid  his  hand  is  eminently  interest 
ing1. 

Harold,  the  last  of  the  "English,"  as  people  of  a 
certain  way  of  feeling  are  fond  of  calling  him — the 
son  of  Godwin,  masterful  minister  of  Edward  the 
Confessor,  the  wearer  for  a  short  and  hurried  hour 
of  the  English  crown,  and  the  opponent  and  victim 
of  William  of  Normandy  on  the  field  of  Hastings 
—is  a  figure  which  combines  many  of  the  elements 
of  romance  and  of  heroism.  The  author  has  very 
characteristically  tried  to  accentuate  the  moral 
character  of  his  hero  by  making  him  a  sort  of  dis 
tant  relation  of  the  family  of  Galahad  and  Arthur 
and  the  other  moralising  gallants  to  whom  his  pages 
have  introduced  us.  Mr.  Tennyson's  Harold  is  a 
warrior  who  talks  about  his  "better  self,"  and  who 
alludes  to 

"Waltham,  my  foundation 
For  men  who  serve  their  neighbour,  not  themselves," 

— a  touch  which  transports  us  instantly  into  the 
atmosphere  of  the  Arthurian  Idyls.  But  Harold's 
history  may  be  very  easily  and  properly  associated 
with  a  moral  problem,  inasmuch  as  it  was  his  un 
happy  fortune  to  have  to  solve,  practically,  a  knotty 
point  which  might  have  been  more  comfortably  left 
to  the  casuists.  Shipwrecked  during  Edward's  life 
upon  the  coast  of  Normandy,  he  is  betrayed  into  the 
hands  of  Duke  William,  who  already  retains  as  hos- 


200  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

tage  one  of  his  brothers  (the  sons  of  Godwin  were 
very  numerous,  and  they  all  figure  briefly,  but  with 
a  certain  attempt  at  individual  characterisation,  in 
the  drama).  To  purchase  his  release  and  that  of 
his  brother,  who  passionately  entreats  him,  he  con 
sents  to  swear  by  certain  unseen  symbols,  which 
prove  afterwards  to  be  the  bones  of  certain  august 
Norman  saints,  that  if  "William  will  suffer  him  to 
return  to  England,  he  will,  on  the  Confessor's 
death,  abstain  from  urging  the  claim  of  the  latter 's 
presumptive  heir  and  do  his  utmost  to  help  the 
Norman  duke  himself  to  the  crown. 

This  scene  is  presented  in  the  volume  before  us. 
Harold  departs  and  regains  England,  and  there,  on 
the  king's  death,  overborne  by  circumstances,  but 
with  much  tribulation  of  mind,  violates  his  oath, 
and  himself  takes  possession  of  the  throne.  The 
interest  of  the  drama  is  in  a  great  measure  the  pic 
ture  of  his  temptation  and  remorse,  his  sense  of  his 
treachery  and  of  the  inevitableness  of  his  chastise 
ment.  With  this  other  matters  are  mingled:  Har 
old's  conflict  with  his  disloyal  brother  Tostig,  Earl 
of  Northumberland,  who  brings  in  the  King  of 
Norway  to  claim  the  crown,  and  who,  with  his  Nor 
wegian  backers,  is  defeated  by  Harold  in  battle  just 
before  William  comes  down  upon  him.  Then  there 
is  his  love-affair  with  Edith,  ward  of  the  Confessor, 
whom  the  latter,  piously  refusing-  to  hear  of  his  vio 
lation  of  his  oath,  condemns  him  to  put  away,  as 


TENNYSON'S  DRAMA  201 

penance  for  the  very  thought.  There  is  also  his 
marriage  with  Aldwyth,  a  designing  person,  widow 
of  a  Welsh  king  whom  Harold  has  defeated,  and 
who,  having  herself  through  her  parentage,  strong 
English  interests,  inveigles  Harold  into  a  union 
which  may  consolidate  their  forces. 

Altogether,  Harold  is,  for  a  hero,  rather  inclined 
to  falter  and  succumb.  It  is  to  his  conscience,  how 
ever,  that  he  finally  succumbs;  he  loses  heart  and 
goes  to  meet  William  at  Hastings  with  a  depressing 
presentiment  of  defeat.  Mr.  Tennyson,  however,  as 
we  gather  from  a  prefatory  sonnet,  which  is  per 
haps  finer  than  anything  in  the  drama  itself,  holds 
that  much  can  be  said  for  the  "Norman-slandered 
hero,"  and  declares  that  he  has  nothing  to  envy 
William  if 

"  Each  stands  full  face  with  all  he  did  below." 
i 

Edith,  Harold's  repudiated  lady-love,  is,  we  sup 
pose,  the  heroine  of  the  story,  inasmuch  as  she  has 
the  privilege  of  expiring  upon  the  corpse  of  tEe 
hero.  Harold's  defeat  is  portrayed  through  a  con 
versation  between  Edith  and  Stigand,  the  English 
and  anti-papal  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  who 
watches  the  fight  at  Senlac  from  a  tent  near  the 
field,  while  the  monks  of  Waltham,  outside,  intone 
a  Latin  invocation  to  the  God  of  Battles  to  sweep 
away  the  Normans. 

The  drama  closes  with  a  scene  on  the  field,  aft 


202  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

the  fight,  in  which  Edith  and  Aldwyth  wander 
about,  trying  to  identify  Harold  among  the  slain. 
On  discovering  him  they  indulge  in  a  few  natural 
recriminations,  then  Edith  loses  her  head  and  ex 
pires  by  his  side.  William  comes  in,  rubbing  his 
hands  over  his  work,  and  intimates  to  Aldwyth  that 
she  may  now  make  herself  agreeable  to  him.  She 
replies,  hypocritically,  "My  punishment  is  more 
than  I  can  bear";  and  with  this,  the  most  dramatic 
speech,  perhaps  in  the  volume,  the  play  terminates. 
Edith,  we  should  say,  is  a  heroine  of  the  didactic 
order.  She  has  a  bad  conscience  about  Harold's 
conduct,  and  about  her  having  continued  on  affec 
tionate  terms  with  him  after  his  diplomatic  mar 
riage  with  Aldwyth.  When  she  prays  for  Harold 's 
success  she  adds  that  she  hopes  heaven  will  not  re 
fuse  to  listen  to  her  because  she  loves  ' '  the  husband 
of  another";  and  after  he  is  defeated  she  re 
proaches  herself  with  having  injured  his  pros 
pects — 

"For  there  was  more  than  sister  in  my  kiss." 

Though  there  are  many  persons  in  the  poem  it 
cannot  be  said  that  any  of  them  attains  a  very  vivid 
individuality.  Indeed,  their  great  number,  the 
drama  being  of  moderate  length,  hinders  the  un 
folding  of  any  one  of  them. 

Mr.  Tennyson,  moreover,  has  not  the  dramatic 
touch;  he  rarely  finds  the  phrase  or  the  movement 


TENNYSON'S  DRAMA  203 

that  illuminates  a  character,  rarely  makes  the  dia 
logue  strike  sparks.  This  is  generally  mild  and 
colourless,  and  the  passages  that  arrest  us,  rela 
tively,  owe  their  relief  to  juxtaposition  rather 
than  to  any  especial  possession  of  the  old  Tenny- 
sonian  energy.  Now  and  then  we  come  upon  a  few 
lines  together  in  which  we  seem  to  catch  an  echo 
of  the  author's  earlier  magic,  or  sometimes  simply 
of  his  earlier  manner.  When  we  do,  we  make  the 
most  of  them  and  are  grateful.  Such,  for  instance, 
is  the  phrase  of  one  of  the  characters  describing  his 
rescue  from  shipwreck.  He  dug  his  hands,  he  says, 
into 

"  My  old  fast  friend  the  shore,  and  clinging  thus 
Felt  the  remorseless  outdraught  of  the  deep 
Haul  like  a  great  strong  fellow  at  my  legs." 

Such  are  the  words  in  which  Wulfnoth,  Harold's 
young  brother,  detained  in  Normandy,  laments  his 
situation : 

"Yea,  and  I 

Shall  see  the  dewy  kiss  of  dawn  no  more 
Make  blush  the  maiden-white  of  our  tall  cliffs, 
Nor  mark  the  sea-bird  rouse  himself  and  hover 
Above  the  windy  ripple,  and  fill  the  sky 
With  free  sea-laughter." 

In  two  or  three  places  the  author  makes,  in  a  few 
words,  a  picture,  an  image,  of  considerable  felicity. 


204  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

Harold  wishes  that  he  were  like  Edward  the  Con 
fessor, 

"  As  holy  and  as  passionless  as  he ! 
That  I  might  rest  as  calmly !     Look  at  him  — 
The  rosy  face,  and  long,  down-silvering  beard, 
The  brows  unwrinkled  as  a  summer  mere." 

We  may  add  that  in  the  few  speeches  allotted  to 
this  monarch  of  virtuous  complexion  this  portrait 
is  agreeably  sustained.  "Holy,  is  he?"  says  the 
Archbishop,  Stigand,  of  him  to  Harold — 

"  A  conscience  for  his  own  soul,  not  his  realm ; 
A  twilight  conscience  lighted  thro'  a  chink; 
Thine  by  the  sun." 

And  the  same  character  hits  upon  a  really  vigorous 
image  in  describing,  as  he  watches  them,  Harold's 
exploits  on  the  battle-fields : 

"Yea,  yea,  for  how  their  lances  snap  and  shiver, 
Against  the  shifting  blaze  of  Harold's  axe! 
War-woodman  of  old  Woden,  how  he  fells 
The  mortal  copse  of  faces ! " 

We  feel,  after  all,  in  Mr.  Tennyson,  even  in  the 
decidedly  minor  key  in  which  this  volume  is 
pitched,  that  he  has  once  known  how  to  turn  our 
English  poetic  phrase  as  skilfully  as  any  one,  and 
that  he  has  not  altogether  forgotten  the  art. 


CONTEMPORARY  NOTES  ON 
WHISTLER  VS.  EUSKIN 


I.  Originally  published  as  an  unsigned  note  in  The  Na 
tion,  December   19,   1878.     The  jury  allowed  Whistler  one 
farthing  damages. 

II.  Originally  published  as  an  unsigned  note  in  The  Na 
tion,  February  13,  1879. 

The  pamphlet  here  referred  to  was  entitled  Whistler 
vs.  Ruskin:  Art  and  Art-Critics.  London:  Chatto  & 
Windus.  1878.  This  essay  was  afterwards  reprinted  in 
The  Gentle  Art  of  Making  Enemies,  London,  1890. 


CONTEMPORARY  NOTES  ON  WHISTLER  vs. 
RUSKIN 

I.    THE  SUIT  FOB  LIBEL. 

THE  London  public  is  never  left  for  many  days 
without  a  cause  celebre  of  some  kind.  The 
latest  novelty  in  this  line  has  been  the  suit  for 
damages  brought  against  Mr.  Ruskin  by  Mr.  James 
Whistler,  the  American  painter,  and  decided  last 
week.  Mr.  Whistler  is  very  well  known  in  the  Lon 
don  world,  and  his  conspicuity,  combined  with  the 
renown  of  the  defendant  and  the  nature  of  the 
case,  made  the  affair  the  talk  of  the  moment.  All 
the  newspapers  have  had  leading  articles  upon  it, 
and  people  have  differed  for  a  few  hours  more  posi 
tively  than  it  had  come  to  be  supposed  that  they 
could  differ  about  anything  save  the  character  of 
the  statesmanship  of  Lord  Beaconsfield.  The  in 
jury  suffered  by  Mr.  Whistler  resides  in  a  para 
graph  published  more  than  a  year  ago  in  that 
strange  monthly  manifesto  called  Fors  Clavigera, 
which  Mr.  Ruskin  had  for  a  long  time  addressed  to 
a  partly  edified,  partly  irritated,  and  greatly 
amused  public.  Mr.  Ruskin  spoke  at  some  length 
of  the  pictures  at  the  Grosvenor  Gallery,  and,  fall- 
207 


208  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

ing  foul  of  Mr.  Whistler,  he  alluded  to  him  in  these 
terms : 

"For  Mr.  Whistler's  own  sake,  no  less  than  for 
the  protection  of  the  purchaser,  Sir  Coutts  Lindsay 
ought  not  to  have  admitted  works  into  the  gallery 
in  which  the  ill-educated  conceit  of  the  artist  so 
nearly  approached  the  aspect  of  wilful  imposture. 
I  have  seen  and  heard  much  of  cockney  impudence 
before  now,  but  never  expected  to  hear  a  coxcomb 
ask  200  guineas  for  flinging  a  pot  of  paint  in  the 
public's  face." 

Mr.  Whistler  alleged  that  these  words  were  li 
bellous,  and  that,  coming  from  a  critic  of  Mr.  Bus 
kin's  eminence,  they  had  done  him,  professionally, 
serious  injury;  and  he  asked  for  £1,000  damage. 
The  case  had  a  two  days '  hearing,  and  it  was  a  sin 
gular  and  most  regrettable  exhibition.  If  it  had 
taken  place  in  some  Western  American  town,  it 
would  have  been  called  provincial  and  barbarous; 
it  would  have  been  cited  as  an  incident  of  a  low 
civilisation.  Beneath  the  stately  towers  of  West 
minster  it  hardly  wore  a  higher  aspect. 

A  British  jury  of  ordinary  tax-payers  was  ap 
pealed  to  decide  whether  Mr.  Whistler's  pictures 
belonged  to  a  high  order  of  art,  and  what  degree 
of  "finish"  was  required  to  render  a  picture  satis 
factory.  The  painter's  singular  canvases  were 
handed  about  in  court,  and  the  counsel  for  the  de 
fence,  holding  one  of  them  up,  called  upon  the  jury 


WHISTLER  VS.  BUS  KIN  209 

to  pronounce  whether  it  was  an  "  accurate  repre 
sentation  "  of  Battersea  Bridge.  Witnesses  were 
summoned  on  either  side  to  testify  to  the  value  of 
Mr.  Whistler's  productions,  and  Mr.  Ruskin  had 
the  honour  of  having  his  estimate  of  them  substan 
tiated  by  Mr.  Frith.  The  weightiest  testimony,  the 
most  intelligently,  and  apparently  the  most  reluc 
tantly  delivered,  was  that  of  Mr.  Burne  Jones,  who 
appeared  to  appreciate  the  ridiculous  character  of 
the  process  to  which  he  had  been  summoned  (by  the 
defence)  to  contribute,  and  who  spoke  of  Mr. 
Whistler's  performance  as  only  in  a  partial  sense 
of  the  word  pictures — as  being  beautiful  in  colour, 
and  indicating  an  extraordinary  power  of  repre 
senting  the  atmosphere,  but  as  being  also  hardly 
more  than  beginnings,  and  fatally  deficient  in  fin 
ish.  For  the  rest  the  crudity  and  levity  of  the 
whole  affair  were  decidedly  painful,  and  few 
things,  I  think,  have  lately  done  more  to  vulgarise 
the  public  sense  of  the  character  of  artistic  produc 
tion. 

The  jury  gave  Mr.  Whistler  nominal  damages. 
The  opinion  of  the  newspapers  seems  to  be  that  he 
has  got  at  least  all  he  deserved — that  anything 
more  would  have  been  a  blow  at  the  liberty  of 
criticism.  I  confess  to  thinking  it  hard  to  decide 
what  Mr.  Whistler  ought  properly  to  have  done, 
while — putting  aside  the  degree  of  one's  apprecia 
tion  of  his  works — I  quite  understand  his  resent- 


210  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

merit.  Mr.  Ruskin's  language  quite  transgresses 
the  decencies  of  criticism,  and  he  has  been  laying 
about  him  for  some  years  past  with  such  promis 
cuous  violence  that  it  gratifies  one 's  sense  of  justice 
to  see  him  brought  up  as  a  disorderly  character. 
On  the  other  hand,  he  is  a  chartered  libertine — he 
has  possessed  himself  by  prescription  of  the  func 
tion  of  a  general  scold.  His  literary  bad  manners 
are  recognised,  and  many  of  his  contemporaries 
have  suffered  from  them  without  complaining.  It 
would  very  possibly,  therefore,  have  been  much 
wiser  on  Mr.  Whistler's  part  to  feign  indifference. 
Unfortunately,  Mr.  Whistler's  productions  are  so 
very  eccentric  and  imperfect  (I  speak  here  of  his 
paintings  only;  his  etchings  are  quite  another  af 
fair,  and  altogether  admirable)  that  his  critic's 
denunciation  could  by  no  means  fall  to  the  ground 
of  itself.  I  wonder  that  before  a  British  jury  they 
had  any  chance  whatever;  they  must  have  been  a 
terrible  puzzle. 

The  verdict,  of  course,  satisfies  neither  party; 
Mr.  Ruskin  is  formally  condemned,  but  the  plain 
tiff  is  not  compensated.  Mr.  Ruskin  too,  doubtless, 
is  not  gratified  at  finding  that  the  fullest  weight 
of  his  disapproval  is  thought  to  be  represented  by 
the  sum  of  one  farthing. 


WHISTLER  VS.  RUSKIN  211 


I  may  mention  as  a  sequel  to  the  brief  account 
of  the  suit  Whistler  v.  Ruskin,  which  I  sent  you 
a  short  time  since,  that  the  plaintiff  has  lately 
published  a  little  pamphlet  in  which  he  delivers 
himself  on  the  subject  of  art-criticism. 

This  little  pamphlet,  issued  by  Chatto  &  Windus, 
is  an  affair  of  seventeen  very  prettily-printed  small 
pages;  it  is  now  in  its  sixth  edition,  it  sells  for  a 
shilling,  and  is  to  be  seen  in  most  of  the  shop-win 
dows.  It  is  very  characteristic  of  the  painter,  and 
highly  entertaining;  but  I  am  not  sure  that  it  will 
have  rendered  appreciable  service  to  the  cause, 
which  he  has  at  heart.  The  cause  that  Mr.  Whist 
ler  has  at  heart  is  the  absolute  suppression  and  ex 
tinction  of  the  art-critic  and  his  function.  Accord 
ing  to  Mr.  Whistler  the  art-critic  is  an  imperti 
nence,  a  nuisance,  a  monstrosity — and  usually,  into 
the  bargain,  an  arrant  fool. 

Mr.  Whistler  writes  in  an  off-hand,  colloquial 
style,  much  besprinkled  with  French — a  style  which 
might  be  called  familiar  if  one  often  encountered 
anything  like  it.  He  writes  by  no  means  as  well  as 
he  paints;  but  his  little  diatribe  against  the  critics 
is  suggestive,  apart  from  the  force  of  anything 
that  he  specifically  urges.  The  painter's  irritated 
feeling  is  interesting,  for  it  suggests  the  state  of 
mind  of  many  of  his  brothers  of  the  brush  in  the 


212  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

presence  of  the  bungling  and  incompetent  disquisi 
tions  of  certain  members  of  the  fraternity  who  sit 
in  judgment  upon  their  works. 

"Let  work  be  received  in  silence/'  says  Mr. 
Whistler,  "as  it  was  in  the  days  to  which  the  pen 
man  still  points  as  an  era  when  art  was  at  its 
apogee."  He  is  very  scornful  of  the  "penman," 
and  it  is  on  the  general  ground  of  his  being  a  pen 
man  that  he  deprecates  the  existence  of  his  late 
adversary,  Mr.  Buskin.  He  does  not  attempt  to 
make  out  a  case  in  detail  against  the  great  com 
mentator  of  pictures;  it  is  enough  for  Mr.  Whist 
ler  that  he  is  a  "litterateur,"  and  that  a  littera 
teur  should  concern  himself  with  his  own  business. 
The  author  also  falls  foul  of  Mr.  Tom  Taylor,  who 
does  the  reports  of  the  exhibitions  in  the  Times, 
and  who  had  the  misfortune,  fifteen  years  ago,  to 
express  himself  rather  unintelligently  about  Velas 
quez. 

' i  The  Observatory  at  Greenwich  under  the  direc 
tion  of  an  apothecary,"  says  Mr.  Whistler,  "the 
College  of  Physicians  with  Tennyson  as  president, 
and  we  know  what  madness  is  about !  But  a  school 
of  art  with  an  accomplished  litterateur  at  its  head 
disturbs  no  one,  and  is  actually  what  the  world 
receives  as  rational,  while  Ruskin  writes  for  pupils 
and  Colvin  holds  forth  at  Cambridge !  Still,  quite 
alone  stands  Ruskin,  whose  writing  is  art  and  whose 


WHISTLER  VS.  RUSKIN  213 

art  is  unworthy  his  writing.  To  him  and  his  ex 
ample  do  we  owe  the  outrage  of  proffered  assistance 
from  the  unscientific — the  meddling  of  the  immod 
est — the  intrusion  of  the  garrulous.  Art,  that  for 
ages  has  hewn  its  own  history  in  marble  and  writ 
ten  its  own  comments  on  canvas,  shall  it  suddenly 
stand  still  and  stammer  and  wait  for  wisdom  from 
the  passer-by? — for  guidance  from  the  hand  that 
holds  neither  brush  nor  chisel  ?  Out  upon  the  shal 
low  conceit!  What  greater  sarcasm  can  Mr.  Bus 
kin  pass  upon  himself  than  that  he  preaches  to 
young  men  what  he  cannot  perform  ?  Why,  unsat 
isfied  with  his  conscious  power,  should  he  choose  to 
become  the  type  of  incompetency  by  talking  for 
forty  years  of  what  he  has  never  done  ? ' ' 

Mr.  Whistler  winds  up  by  pronouncing  Mr.  Bus 
kin,  of  whose  writings  he  has  perused,  I  suspect,  an 
infinitesimally  small  number  of  pages,  "the  Peter 
Parley  of  Painting. "  This  is  very  far,  as  I  say, 
from  exhausting  the  question ;  but  it  is  easy  to  un 
derstand  the  state  of  mind  of  a  London  artist  (to 
go  no  further)  who  skims  through  the  critiques  in 
the  local  journals.  There  is  no  scurrility  in  saying 
that  these  are  for  the  most  part  almost  incredibly 
weak  and  unskilled ;  to  turn  from  one  of  them  to  a 
critical  feuilleton  in  one  of  the  Parisian  journals 
is  like  passing  from  a  primitive  to  a  very  high  civil 
isation.  Even,  however,  if  the  reviews  of  pictures 


214  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

were  very  much  better,  the  protest  of  the  producer 
as  against  the  critic  would  still  have  a  considerable 
validity. 

Few  people  will  deny  that  the  development  of 
criticism  in  our  day  has  become  inordinate,  dispro 
portionate,  and  that  much  of  what  is  written  under 
that  exalted  name  is  very  idle  and  superficial.  Mr. 
Whistler's  complaint  belongs  to  the  general  ques 
tion,  and  I  am  afraid  it  will  never  obtain  a  serious 
hearing,  on  special  and  exceptional  grounds.  The 
whole  artistic  fraternity  is  in  the  same  boat — the 
painters,  the  architects,  the  poets,  the  novelists,  the 
dramatists,  the  actors,  the  musicians,  the  singers. 
They  have  a  standing,  and  in  many  ways  a  very 
just,  quarrel  with  criticism;  but  perhaps  many  of 
them  would  admit  that,  on  the  whole,  so  long  as 
they  appeal  to  a  public  laden  with  many  cares  and 
a  great  variety  of  interests,  it  gratifies  as  much  as 
it  displeases  them.  Art  is  one  of  the  necessities  of 
life ;  but  even  the  critics  themselves  would  probably 
not  assert  that  criticism  is  anything  more  than  an 
agreeable  luxury — something  like  printed  talk.  If 
it  be  said  that  they  claim  too  much  in  calling  it 
"  agreeable ' '  to  the  criticised,  it  may  be  added  in 
their  behalf  that  they  probably  mean  agreeable  in 
the  long  run. 


A  NOTE  ON  JOHN  BURROUGHS 


An  unsigned  review  of  Winter  Sunshine.  By  John 
Burroughs.  New  York:  Kurd  &  Houghton.  1876.  Orig 
inally  published  in  The  Nation,  January  27,  1876. 


A  NOTE  ON  JOHN  BURROUGHS 

r  I TEIS  is  a  very  charming  little  book.  "We  had 
jL  noticed,  on  their  appearance  in  various  peri 
odicals,  some  of  the  articles  of  which  it  is  composed, 
and  we  find  that,  read  continuously,  they  have 
given  us  even  more  pleasure.  We  have,  indeed,  en 
joyed  them  more  perhaps  than  we  can  show  suffi 
cient  cause  for.  They  are  slender  and  light,  but 
they  have  a  real  savour  of  their  own. 

Mr.  Burroughs  is  known  as  an  out-of-door  ob 
server — a  devotee  of  birds  and  trees  and  fields  and 
aspects  of  weather  and  humble  wayside  incidents. 
The  minuteness  of  his  observation,  the  keenness  of 
his  perception  of  all  these  things,  give  him  a  real 
originality  which  is  confirmed  by  a  style  sometimes 
indeed  idiomatic  and  unfinished  to  a  fault,  but 
capable  of  remarkable  felicity  and  vividness.  Mr. 
Burroughs  is  also,  fortunately  for  his  literary  pros 
perity  in  these  days,  a  decided  "humourist";  he 
is  essentially  and  genially  an  American,  without  at 
all  posing  as  one,  and  his  sketches  have  a  delightful 
oddity,  vivacity,  and  freshness. 

The  first  half  of  his  volume,  and  the  least  sub- 
217 


218  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

stantial,  treats  of  certain  rambles  taken  in  the  win 
ter  and  spring  in  the  country  around  Washington ; 
the  author  is  an  apostle  of  pedestrianism,  and  these 
pages  form  a  prolonged  rhapsody  upon  the  pleas 
ures  within  the  reach  of  any  one  who  will  take  the 
trouble  to  stretch  his  legs.  They  are  full  of 
charming  touches,  and  indicate  a  real  genius  for 
the  observation  of  natural  things.  Mr.  Burroughs 
is  a  sort  of  reduced,  but  also  more  humourous, 
more  available,  and  more  sociable  Thoreau.  He  is 
especially  intimate  with  the  birds,  and  he  gives  his 
reader  an  acute  sense  of  how  sociable  an  affair,  dur 
ing  six  months  of  the  year,  this  feathery  lore  may 
make  a  lonely  walk.  He  is  also  intimate  with  the 
question  of  apples,  and  he  treats  of  it  in  a  succu 
lent  disquisition  which  imparts  to  the  somewhat 
trivial  theme  a  kind  of  lyrical  dignity.  He  re 
marks,  justly,  that  women  are  poor  apple-eaters. 

But  the  best  pages  in  his  book  are  those  which 
commemorate  a  short  visit  to  England  and  the  rap 
ture  of  his  first  impressions.  This  little  sketch,  in 
spite  of  its  extreme  slightness,  really  deserves  to 
become  classical.  We  have  read  far  solider  treat 
ises  which  contained  less  of  the  essence  of  the  mat 
ter;  or  at  least,  if  it  is  not  upon  the  subject  itself 
that  Mr.  Burroughs  throws  particularly  powerful 
light,  it  is  the  essence  of  the  ideal  traveller's  spirit 
that  he  gives  us,  the  freshness  and  intensity  of  im 
pression,  the  genial  bewilderment,  the  universal 


A  NOTE  ON  JOHN  BURROUGHS      219 

appreciativeness.  All  this  is  delightfully  naif, 
frank,  and  natural. 

"All  this  had  been  told,  and  it  pleased  me  so  in 
the  seeing  that  I  must  tell  it  again/'  the  author 
says;  and  this  is  the  constant  spirit  of  his  talk. 
He  appears  to  have  been  "pleased"  as  no  man  was 
ever  pleased  before ;  so  much  so  that  his  reflections 
upon  his  own  country  sometimes  become  unduly  in 
vidious.  But  if  to  be  appreciative  is  the  traveller's 
prime  duty,  Mr.  Burroughs  is  a  prince  of  travel 
lers. 

' '  Then  to  remember  that  it  was  a  new  sky  and  a 
new  earth  I  was  beholding,  that  it  was  England, 
the  old  mother  at  last,  no  longer  a  faith  or  a  fable 
but  an  actual  fact,  there  before  my  eyes  and  under 
my  feet — why  should  I  not  exult?  Go  to!  I  will 
be  indulged.  These  trees,  those  fields,  that  bird 
darting  along  the  hedge-rows,  those  men  and  boys 
picking  blackberries  in  October,  those  English  flow 
ers  by  the  roadside  (stop  the  carriage  while  I  leap 
out  and  pluck  them),  the  homely  domestic  look  of 
things,  those  houses,  those  queer  vehicles,  those 
thick-coated  horses,  those  big-footed,  coarsely-clad, 
clear-skinned  men  and  women;  this  massive, 
homely,  compact  architecture — let  me  have  a  good 
look,  for  this  is  my  first  hour  in  England,  and  I 
am  drunk  with  the  joy  of  seeing!  This  house-fly 
let  me  inspect  it,  and  that  swallow  skimming  along 
so  familiarly." 


220  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

One  envies  Mr.  Burroughs  his  acute  relish  of  the 
foreign  spectacle  even  more  than  one  enjoys  his  ex 
pression  of  it.  He  is  not  afraid  to  start  and  stare ; 
his  state  of  mind  is  exactly  opposed  to  the  high 
dignity  of  the  nil  admirari.  When  he  goes  into  St. 
Paul's,  "my  companions  rushed  about,"  he  says, 
'  *  as  if  each  one  had  a  search-warrant  in  his  pocket ; 
but  I  was  content  to  uncover  my  head  and  drop 
into  a  seat,  and  busy  my  mind  with  some  simple 
object  near  at  hand,  while  the  sublimity  that  soared 
about  me  stole  into  my  soul."  He  meets  a  little 
girl  carrying  a  pail  in  a  meadow  near  Stratford, 
stops  her  and  talks  with  her,  and  finds  an  ineffable 
delight  in  ' '  the  sweet  and  novel  twang  of  her  words. 
Her  family  had  emigrated  to  America,  failed  to 
prosper,  and  come  back;  but  I  hardly  recognise 
even  the  name  of  my  own  country  in  her  innocent 
prattle;  it  seemed  like  a  land  of  fable — all  had  a 
remote  mythological  air,  and  I  pressed  my  en 
quiries  as  if  I  was  hearing  of  this  strange  land  for 
the  first  time." 

Mr.  Burroughs  is  unfailingly  complimentary;  he 
sees  sermons  in  stones  and  good  in  everything;  the 
somewhat  dusky  British  world  was  never  steeped 
in  so  intense  a  glow  of  rose-colour.  Sometimes  his 
optimism  rather  interferes  with  his  accuracy — as 
when  he  detects  "forests  and  lakes"  in  'Hyde  Park, 
and  affirms  that  the  English  rural  landscape  does 
not,  in  comparison  with  the  American,  appear 


A  NOTE  ON  JOHN  BURROUGHS      221 

highly  populated.  This  latter  statement  is  appar 
ently  made  apropos  of  that  long  stretch  of  subur 
ban  scenery,  pure  and  simple,  which  extends  from 
Liverpool  to  London.  It  does  not  strike  us  as  fe 
licitous,  either,  to  say  that  women  are  more  kindly 
treated  in  England  than  in  the  United  States,  and 
especially  that  they  are  less  " leered  at."  "Leer 
ing"  at  women  is  happily  less  common  all  the  world 
over  than  it  is  sometimes  made  to  appear  for  pic 
turesque  purposes  in  the  magazines ;  but  we  should 
say  that  if  there  is  a  country  where  the  art  has  not 
reached  a  high  stage  of  development,  it  is  our  own. 
It  must  be  added  that  although  Mr.  Burroughs 
is  shrewd  as  well  as  naif,  the  latter  quality  some 
times  distances'  the  former.  He  runs  over  for  a 
week  to  France.  "At  Dieppe  I  first  saw  the 
wooden  shoe,  and  heard  its  dry,  senseless  clatter 
upon  the  pavement.  How  suggestive  of  the 
cramped  and  inflexible  conditions  with  which  hu 
man  nature  has  borne  so  long  in  these  lands ! ' '  But 
in  Paris  also  he  is  appreciative — singularly  so  for 
so  complete  an  outsider  as  he  confesses  himself  to 
be — and  throughout  he  is  very  well  worth  reading. 
We  heartily  commend  his  little  volume  for  its  hon 
esty,  its  individuality,  and,  in  places,  its  really 
blooming  freshness. 


MB.  KIPLING'S  EAELY  STORIES 


Originally  published  as  an  Introduction  to  the  Conti 
nental  edition  of  Soldiers  Three.  By  Rudyard  Kipling; 
volume  59  of  the  English  Library,  Leipzig,  Heinemann  and 
Balestier  Limited,  London.  1891. 


MR.  KIPLING'S  EARLY  STORIES 

IT  would  be  difficult  to  answer  the  general  ques 
tion  whether  the  books  of  the  world  grow,  as 
they  multiply,  as  much  better  as  one  might  suppose 
they  ought,  with  such  a  lesson  of  wasteful  experi 
ment  spread  perpetually  behind  them.  There  is  no 
doubt,  however,  that  in  one  direction  we  profit 
largely  by  this  education :  whether  or  not  we  have 
become  wiser  to  fashion,  we  have  certainly  become 
keener  to  enjoy.  We  have  acquired  the  sense  of  a 
particular  quality  which  is  precious  beyond  all  oth 
ers — so  precious  as  to  make  us  wonder  where,  at  such 
a  rate,  our  posterity  will  look  for  it,  and  how  they 
will  pay  for  it.  After  tasting  many  essences  we 
find  freshness  the  sweetest  of  all.  We  yearn  for  it, 
we  watch  for  it  and  lie  in  wait  for  it,  and  when  we 
catch  it  on  the  wing  (it  flits  by  so  fast)  we  cele 
brate  our  capture  with  extravagance.  We  feel  that 
after  so  much  has  come  and  gone  it  is  more  and 
more  of  a  feat  and  a  tour  de  force  to  be  fresh.  The 
tormenting  part  of  the  phenomenon  is  that,  in  any 
particular  key,  it  can  happen  but  once — by  a  sad 
failure  of  the  law  that  inculcates  the  repetition  of 
goodness.  It  is  terribly  a  matter  of  accident ;  emu- 
225 


226  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

lation  and  imitation  have  a  fatal  effect  upon  it.  It 
is  easy  to  see,  therefore,  what  importance  the  epi 
cure  may  attach  to  the  brief  moment  of  its  bloom. 
While  that  lasts  we  all  are  epicures. 

This  helps  to  explain,  I  think,  the  unmistakeable 
intensity  of  the  general  relish  for  Mr.  Rudyard 
Kipling.  His  bloom  lasts,  from  month  to  month, 
almost  surprisingly — by  which  I  mean  that  he  has 
not  worn  out  even  by  active  exercise  the  particular 
property  that  made  us  all,  more  than  a  year  ago, 
so  precipitately  drop  everything  else  to  attend  to 
him.  He  has  many  others  which  he  will  doubtless 
always  keep ;  but  a  part  of  the  potency  attaching  to 
his  freshness,  what  makes  it  as  exciting  as  a  drawing 
of  lots,  is  our  instinctive  conviction  that  he  cannot, 
in  the  nature  of  things,  keep  that ;  so  that  our  en 
joyment  of  him,  so  long  as  the  miracle  is  still 
wrought,  has  both  the  charm  of  confidence  and  the 
charm  of  suspense.  And  then  there  is  the  further 
charm,  with  Mr.  Kipling,  that  this  same  freshness 
is  such  a  very  strange  affair  of  its  kind — so  mixed 
and  various  and  cynical,  and,  in  certain  lights,  so 
contradictory  of  itself.  The  extreme  recentness  of 
his  inspiration  is  as  enviable  as  the  tale  is  startling 
that  his  productions  tell  of  his  being  at  home,  do 
mesticated  and  initiated,  in  this  wicked  and  weary 
world.  At  times  he  strikes  us  as  shockingly  preco 
cious,  at  others  as  serenely  wise.  On  the  whole,  he 
presents  himself  as  a  strangely  clever  youth  who 


MR.  KIPLING'S  EARLY  STORIES     227 

has  stolen  the  formidable  mask  of  maturity  and 
rushes  about,  making  people  jump  with  the  deep 
sounds,  and  sportive  exaggerations  of  tone,  that 
issue  from  its  painted  lips.  He  has  this  mark  of 
a  real  vocation,  that  different  spectators  may  like 
him — must  like  him,  I  should  almost  say — for  dif 
ferent  things;  and  this  refinement  of  attraction, 
that  to  those  who  reflect  even  upon  their  pleasures 
he  has  as  much  to  say  as  to  those  who  never  reflect 
upon  anything.  Indeed  there  is  a  certain  amount 
of  room  for  surprise  in  the  fact  that,  being  so  much 
the  sort  of  figure  that  the  hardened  critic  likes  to 
meet,  he  should  also  be  the  sort  of  figure  that  in 
spires  the  multitude  with  confidence — for  a  com 
plicated  air  is,  in  general,  the  last  thing  that  does 
this. 

By  the  critic  who  likes  to  meet  such  a  bristling 
adventurer  as  Mr.  Kipling  I  mean,  of  course,  the 
critic  for  whom  the  happy  accident  of  character, 
whatever  form  it  may  take,  is  more  of  a  bribe  to 
interest  than  the  promise  of  some  character  cher 
ished  in  theory — the  appearance  of  justifying  some 
foregone  conclusion  as  to  what  a  writer  or  a  book 
"ought,"  in  the  Ruskinian  sense,  to  be;  the  critic, 
in  a  word,  who  has,  a  priori,  no  rule  for  a  literary 
production  but  that  it  shall  have  genuine  life. 
Such  a  critic  (he  gets  much  more  out  of  his  oppor 
tunities,  I  think,  than  the  other  sort)  likes  a  writer 
exactly  in  proportion  as  he  is  a  challenge,  an  appeal 


228  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

to  interpretation,  intelligence,  ingenuity,  to  what  is 
elastic  in  the  critical  mind — in  proportion  indeed  as 
he  may  be  a  negation  of  things  familiar  and  taken 
for  granted.  He  feels  in  this  case  how  much  more 
play  and  sensation  there  is  for  himself. 

Mr.  Kipling,  then,  has  the  character  that  fur 
nishes  plenty  of  play  and  of  vicarious  experience- 
that  makes  any  perceptive  reader  foresee  a  rare  lux 
ury.  He  has  the  great  merit  of  being  a  compact  and 
convenient  illustration  of  the  surest  source  of  inter 
est  in  any  painter  of  life — that  of  having  an  ident 
ity  as  marked  as  a  window-frame.  He  is  one  of  the 
illustrations,  taken  near  at  hand,  that  help  to  clear 
up  the  vexed  question  in  the  novel  or  the  tale,  of 
kinds,  camps,  schools,  distinctions,  the  right  way 
and  the  wrong  way ;  so  very  positively  does  he  con 
tribute  to  the  showing  that  there  are  just  as  many 
kinds,  as  many  ways,  as  many  forms  and  degrees 
of  the  "right,"  as  there  are  personal  points  in 
view.  It  is  the  blessing  of  the  art  he  practises  that 
it  is  made  up  of  experience  conditioned,  infinitely, 
in  this  personal  way — the  sum  of  the  feeling  of  life 
as  reproduced  by  innumerable  natures;  natures 
that  feel  through  all  their  differences,  testify 
through  their  diversities.  These  differences,  which 
make  the  identity,  are  of  the  individual ;  they  form 
the  channel  by  which  life  flows  through  him,  and 
how  much  he  is  able  to  give  us  of  life — in  other 


MR.  KIPLING'S  EARLY  STORIES     229 

words,  how  much  he  appeals  to  us — depends  on 
whether  they  form  it  solidly. 

This  hardness  of  the  conduit,  cemented  with  a 
rare  assurance,  is  perhaps  the  most  striking  idio 
syncrasy  of  Mr.  Kipling;  and  what  makes  it  more 
remarkable  is  that  incident  of  his  extreme  youth 
which,  if  we  talk  about  him  at  all,  we  cannot  affect 
to  ignore.  I  cannot  pretend  to  give  a  biography 
or  a  chronology  of  the  author  of  l '  Soldiers  Three, ' ' 
but  I  cannot  overlook  the  general,  the  importunate 
fact  that,  confidently  as  he  has  caught  the  trick  and 
habit  of  this  sophisticated  world,  he  has  not  been 
long  of  it.  His  extreme  youth  is  indeed  what  I 
may  call  his  window-bar — the  support  on  which  he 
somewhat  rowdily  leans  while  he  looks  down  at  the 
human  scene  with  his  pipe  in  his  teeth ;  just  as  his 
other  conditions  (to  mention  only  some  of  them), 
are  his  prodigious  facility,  which  is  only  less  re 
markable  than  his  stiff  selection ;  his  unabashed  tem 
perament,  his  flexible  talent,  his  smoking-room  man 
ner,  his  familiar  friendship  with  India — established 
so  rapidly,  and  so  completely  under  his  control ;  his 
delight  in  battle,  his  "  cheek "  about  women — *and 
indeed  about  men  and  about  everything;  his  de 
termination  not  to  be  duped,  his  " imperial"  fibre, 
his  love  of  the  inside  view,  the  private  soldier  and 
the  primitive  man.  I  must  add  further  to  this  list 
of  attractions  the  remarkable  way  in  which  he 


230  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

makes  us  aware  that  he  has  been  put  up  to  the 
whole  thing  directly  by  life  (miraculously,  in  his 
teens),  and  not  by  the  communications  of  others. 
These  elements,  and  many  more,  constitute  a  singu 
larly  robust  little  literary  character  (our  use  of  the 
diminutive  is  altogether  a  note  of  endearment  and 
enjoyment)  which,  if  it  has  the  rattle  of  high  spirits 
and  is  in  no  degree  apologetic  or  shrinking,  yet 
offers  a  very  liberal  pledge  in  the  way  of  good 
faith  and  immediate  performance.  Mr.  Kipling's 
performance  conies  off  before  the  more  circumspect 
have  time  to  decide  whether  they  like  him  or  not, 
and  if  you  have  seen  it  once  you  will  be  sure  to  re 
turn  to  the  show.  He  makes  us  prick  up  our  ears 
to  the  good  news  that  in  the  smoking-room  too  there 
may  be  artists;  and  indeed  to  an  intimation  still 
more  refined — that  the  latest  development  of  the 
modern  also  may  be,  most  successfully,  for  the 
canny  artist  to  put  his  victim  off  his  guard  by  imi 
tating  the  amateur  (superficially,  of  course)  to  the 
life. 

These,  then,  are  some  of  the  reasons  why  Mr. 
Kipling  may  be  dear  to  the  analyst  as  well  as,  M. 
Eenan  says,  to  the  simple.  The  simple  may  like 
him  because  he  is  wonderful  about  India,  and  India 
has  not  been  i  l  done ' ' ;  while  there  is  plenty  left  for 
the  morbid  reader  in  the  surprises  of  his  skill  and 
the  fioriture  of  his  form,  which  are  so  oddly  inde 
pendent  of  any  distinctively  literary  note  in  him, 


MR.  KIPLING'S  EARLY  STORIES    231 

any  bookish  association.  It  is  as  one  of  the  morbid 
that  the  writer  of  these  remarks  (which  doubtless 
only  too  shamefully  betray  his  character)  exposes 
himself  as  most  consentingly  under  the  spell.  The 
freshness  arising  from  a  subject  that — by  a  good 
fortune  I  do  not  mean  to  underestimate — has  never 
been  "done,"  is  after  all  less  of  an  affair  to  build 
upon  than  the  freshness  residing  in  the  temper  of 
the  artist.  Happy  indeed  is  Mr.  Kipling,  who  can 
command  so  much  of  both  kinds.  It  is  still  as  one 
of  the  morbid,  no  doubt — that  is,  as  one  of  those 
who  are  capable  of  sitting  up  all  night  for  a  new 
impression  of  talent,  of  scouring  the  trodden  field 
for  one  little  spot  of  green — that  I  find  our  young 
author  quite  most  curious  in  his  air,  and  not  only 
in  his  air,  but  in  his  evidently  very  real  sense,  of 
knowing  his  way  about  life.  Curious  in  the  high 
est  degree  and  well  worth  attention  is  such  an  idio 
syncrasy  as  this  in  a  young  Anglo-Saxon.  We 
meet  it  with  familiar  frequency  in  the  budding  tal 
ents  of  France,  and  it  startles  and  haunts  us  for  an 
hour.  After  an  hour,  however,  the  mystery  is  apt 
to  fade,  for  we  find  that  the  wondrous  initiation 
is  not  in  the  least  general,  is  only  exceedingly  spe 
cial,  and  is,  even  with  this  limitation,  very  often 
rather  conventional.  In  a  word,  it  is  with  the 
ladies  that  the  young  Frenchman  takes  his  ease, 
and  more  particularly  with  the  ladies  selected  ex 
pressly  to  make  this  attitude  convincing.  When 


232  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

they  have  let  him  off,  the  dimnesses  too  often  en 
compass  him.  But  for  Mr.  Kipling  there  are  no 
dimnesses  anywhere,  and  if  the  ladies  are  indeed 
violently  distinct  they  are  not  only  strong  notes  in 
a  universal  loudness.  This  loudness  fills  the  ears 
of  Mr.  Kipling's  admirers  (it  lacks  sweetness,  no 
doubt,  for  those  who  are  not  of  the  number),  and 
there  is  really  only  one  strain  that  is  absent  from  it 
— the  voice,  as  it  were,  of  the  civilised  man;  in 
whom  I  of  course  also  include  the  civilised  woman. 
But  this  is  an  element  that  for  the  present  one  does 
not  miss — every  other  note  is  so  articulate  and  di 
rect. 

It  is  a  part  of  the  satisfaction  the  author  gives  us 
that  he  can  make  us  speculate  as  to  whether  he  will 
be  able  to  complete  his  picture  altogether  (this  is 
as  far  as  we  presume  to  go  in  meddling  with  the 
question  of  his  future)  without  bringing  in  the 
complicated  soul.  On  the  day  he  does  so,  if  he 
handles  it  with  anything  like  the  cleverness  he  has 
already  shown,  the  expectation  of  his  friends  will 
take  a  great  bound.  Meanwhile,  at  any  rate,  we 
have  Mulvaney,  and  Mulvaney  is  after  all  tolerably 
complicated.  He  is  only  a  six-foot  saturated  Irish 
private,  but  he  is  a  considerable  pledge  of  more  to 
come.  Hasn't  he,  for  that  matter,  the  tongue  of  a 
hoarse  siren,  and  hasn't  he  also  mysteries  and  in 
finitudes  almost  Carlylese?  Since  I  am  speaking 
of  him  I  may  as  well  say  that,  as  an  evocation,  he 


MR.  KIPLING'S  EARLY  STORIES    233 

has  probably  led  captive  those  of  Mr.  Kipling's 
readers  who  have  most  given  up  resistance.  He  is 
a  piece  of  portraiture  of  the  largest,  vividest  kind, 
growing  and  growing  on  the  painter's  hands  with 
out  ever  outgrowing  them.  I  can't  help  regarding 
him,  in  a  certain  sense,  as  Mr.  Kipling's  tutelary 
deity — a  landmark  in  the  direction  in  which  it  is 
open  to  him  to  look  furthest.  If  the  author  will  only 
go  as  far  in  this  direction  as  Mulvaney  is  capable  of 
taking  him  (and  the  inimitable  Irishman  is  like  Vol 
taire's  Habakkuk,  capable  de  tout)  he  may  still  dis 
cover  a  treasure  and  find  a  reward  for  the  services 
he  has  rendered  the  winner  of  Dinah  Shadd.  I 
hasten  to  add  that  the  truly  appreciative  reader 
should  surely  have  no  quarrel  with  the  primitive 
element  in  Mr.  Kipling's  subject-matter,  or  with 
what,  for  want  of  a  better  name,  I  may  call  his  love 
of  low  life.  What  is  that  but  essentially  a  part  of 
his  freshness?  And  for  what  part  of  his  fresh 
ness  are  we  exactly  more  thankful  than  for  just 
this  smart  jostle  that  he  gives  the  old  stupid  super 
stition  that  the  amiability  of  a  story-teller  is  the 
amiability  of  the  people  he  represents — that  their 
vulgarity,  or  depravity,  or  gentility,  or  fatuity  are 
tantamount  to  the  same  qualities  in  the  painter 
itself  ?  A  blow  from  which,  apparently,  it  will  not 
easily  recover  is  dealt  this  infantine  philosophy  by 
Mr.  Howells  when,  with  the  most  distinguished  dex 
terity  and  all  the  detachment  of  a  master,  he 


234       EARLY  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

handles  some  of  the  clumsiest,  crudest,  most  human 
things  in  life — answering  surely  thereby  the  play 
goers  in  the  sixpenny  gallery  who  howl  at  the  rep 
resentative  of  the  villain  when  he  comes  before  the 
curtain. 

Nothing  is  more  refreshing  than  this  active,  dis 
interested  sense  of  the  real;  it  is  doubtless  the 
quality  for  the  want  of  more  of  which  our  English 
and  American  fiction  has  turned  so  wofully  stale. 
We  are  ridden  by  the  old  conventionalities  of  type 
and  small  proprieties  of  observance — by  the  fool 
ish  baby-formula  (to  put  it  sketchily)  of  the  pic 
ture  and  the  subject.  Mr.  Kipling  has  all  the  air 
of  being  disposed  to  lift  the  whole  business  off  the 
nursery  carpet,  and  of  being  perhaps  even  more 
able  than  he  is  disposed.  One  must  hasten  of 
course  to  parenthesise  that  there  is  not,  intrin 
sically,  a  bit  more  luminosity  in  treating  of  low 
life  and  of  primitive  man  than  of  those  whom  civil 
isation  has  kneaded  to  a  finer  paste:  the  only 
luminosity  in  either  case  is  in  the  intelligence  with 
which  the  thing  is  done.  But  it  so  happens  that, 
among  ourselves,  the  frank,  capable  outlook,  when 
turned  upon  the  vulgar  majority,  the  coarse,  re 
ceding  edges  of  the  social  perspective,  borrows  a 
charm  from  being  new;  such  a  charm  as,  for  in 
stance,  repetition  has  already  despoiled  it  of 
among  the  French — the  hapless  French  who  pay 
the  penalty  as  well  as  enjoy  the  glow  of  living  in- 


MR.  KIPLING'S  EARLY  STORIES     235 

tellectually  so  much  faster  than  we.  It  is  the  most 
inexorable  part  of  our  fate  that  we  grow  tired  of 
everything,  and  of  course  in  due  time  we  may 
grow  tired  even  of  what  explorers  shall  come  back 
to  tell  us  about  the  great  grimy  condition,  or,  with 
unprecedented  items  and  details,  about  the  gray 
middle  state  which  darkens  into  it.  But  the  ex 
plorers,  bless  them!  may  have  a  long  day  before 
that;  it  is  early  to  trouble  about  reactions,  so  that 
we  must  give  them  the  benefit  of  every  presump 
tion.  "We  are  thankful  for  any  boldness  and  any 
sharp  curiosity,  and  that  is  why  we  are  thankful 
for  Mr.  Kipling's  general  spirit  and  for  most  of 
his  excursions. 

Many  of  these,  certainly,  are  into  a  region  not 
to  be  designated  as  superficially  dim,  though  in 
deed  the  author  always  reminds  us  that  India  is 
above  all  the  land  of  mystery.  A  large  part  of  his 
high  spirits,  and  of  ours,  comes  doubtless  from  the 
amusement  of  such  vivid,  heterogeneous  material, 
from  the  irresistible  magic  of  scorching  suns,  sub 
ject  empires,  uncanny  religions,  uneasy  garrisons 
and  smothered-up  women — from  heat  and  colour 
and  danger  and  dust.  India  is  a  portentous  im 
age,  and  we  are  duly  awed  by  the  familiarities  it 
undergoes  at  Mr.  Kipling's  hand  and  by  the  fine 
impunity,  the  sort  of  fortune  that  favours  the 
brave,  of  his  want  of  awe.  An  abject  humility  is 
not  his  strong  point,  but  he  gives  us  something  in- 


236  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

stead  of  it — vividness  and  drollery,  the  vision  and 
the  thrill  of  many  things,  the  misery  and  strange 
ness  of  most,  the  personal  sense  of  a  hundred  queer 
contacts  and  risks.  And  then  in  the  absence  of 
respect  he  has  plenty  of  knowledge,  and  if  knowl 
edge  should  fail  him  he  would  have  plenty  of  in 
vention.  Moreover,  if  invention  should  ever  fail 
him,  he  would  still  have  the  lyric  string  and  the 
patriotic  chord,  on  which  he  plays  admirably;  so 
that  it  may  be  said  he  is  a  man  of  resources,  What 
he  gives  us,  above  all,  is  the  feeling  of  the  English 
manner  and  the  English  blood  in  conditions  they 
have  made  at  once  so  much  and  so  little  their  own ; 
with  manifestations  grotesque  enough  in  some  of 
his  satiric  sketches  and  deeply  impressive  in  some 
of  his  anecdotes  of  individual  responsibility. 

His  Indian  impressions  divide  themselves  into 
three  groups,  one  of  which,  I  think,  very  much 
outshines  the  others.  First  to  be  mentioned  are  the 
tales  of  native  life,  curious  glimpses  of  custom  and 
superstition,  dusky  matters  not  beholden  of  the 
many,  for  which  the  author  has  a  remarkable  flair. 
Then  comes  the  social,  the  Anglo-Indian  episode, 
the  study  of  administrative  and  military  types, 
and  of  the  wonderful  rattling,  riding  ladies  who, 
at  Simla  and  more  desperate  stations,  look  out  for 
husbands  and  lovers;  often,  it  would  seem,  and 
husbands  and  lovers  of  others.  The  most  brilliant 
group  is  devoted  wholly  to  the  common  soldier,  and 


MR.  KIPLING'S  EARLY  STORIES    237 

of  this  series  it  appears  to  me  that  too  much  good 
is  hardly  to  be  said.  Here  Mr.  Kipling,  with  all 
his  off-handedness,  is  a  master ;  for  we  are  held  not 
so  much  by  the  greater  or  less  oddity  of  the  par 
ticular  yarn — sometimes  it  is  scarcely  a  yarn  at 
all,  but  something  much  less  artificial — as  by  the 
robust  attitude  of  the  narrator,  who  never  arranges 
or  glosses  or  falsifies,  but  makes  straight  for  the 
common  and  the  characteristic.  I  have  mentioned 
the  great  esteem  in  which  I  hold  Mulvaney — surely 
a  charming  man  and  one  qualified  to  adorn  a  higher 
sphere.  Mulvaney  is  a  creation  to  be  proud  of, 
and  his  two  comrades  stand  as  firm  on  their  legs. 
In  spite  of  Mulvaney 's  social  possibilities,  they 
are  all  three  finished  brutes;  but  it  is  precisely  in 
the  finish  that  we  delight.  Whatever  Mr.  Kipling 
may  relate  about  them  forever  will  encounter  read 
ers  equally  fascinated  and  unable  fully  to  justify 
their  faith. 

Are  not  those  literary  pleasures  after  all  the 
most  intense  which  are  the  most  perverse  and  whim 
sical,  and  even  indefensible?  There  is  a  logic  in 
them  somewhere,  but  it  often  lies  below  the  plum 
met  of  criticism.  The  spell  may  be  weak  in  a 
writer  who  has  every  reasonable  and  regular  claim, 
and  it  may  be  irresistible  in  one  who  presents  him 
self  with  a  style  corresponding  to  a  bad  hat.  A 
good  hat  is  better  than  a  bad  one,  but  a  conjuror 
may  wear  either.  Many  a  reader  will  never  be 


238  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

able  to  say  what  secret  human  force  lays  its  hand 
upon  him  when  Private  Ortheris,  having  sworn 
" quietly  into  the  blue  sky,"  goes  mad  with  home 
sickness  by  the  yellow  river  and  raves  for  the 
basest  sights  and  sounds  of  London.  I  can  scarcely 
tell  why  I  think  "The  Courting  of  Dinah  Shadd" 
a  masterpiece  (though,  indeed,  I  can  make  a 
shrewd  guess  at  one  of  the  reasons),  nor  would  it 
be  worth  while  perhaps  to  attempt  to  defend  the 
same  pretension  in  regard  to  "On  Greenhow 
Hill" — much  less  to  trouble  the  tolerant  reader  of 
these  remarks  with  a  statement  of  how  many  more 
performances  in  the  nature  of  "The  End  of  the 
Passage"  (quite  admitting  even  that  they  might 
not  represent  Mr.  Kipling  at  his  best)  I  am  con 
scious  of  a  latent  relish  for.  One  might  as  well 
admit  while  one  is  about  it  that  one  has  wept  pro 
fusely  over  "The  Drums  of  the  Fore  and  Aft," 
the  history  of  the  "Dutch  courage"  of  two  dread 
ful  dirty  little  boys,  who,  in  the  face  of  Afghans 
scarcely  more  dreadful,  saved  the  reputation  of 
their  regiment  and  perished,  the  least  mawkishly 
in  the  world,  in  a  squalor  of  battle  incomparably 
expressed.  People  who  know  how  peaceful  they 
are  themselves  and  have  no  bloodshed  to  reproach 
themselves  with  needn't  scruple  to  mention  the 
glamour  that  Mr.  Kipling's  intense  militarism  has 
for  them,  and  how  astonishing  and  contagious  they 
find  it,  in  spite  of  the  unromantic  complexion  of  it 


MR.  KIPLING'S  EARLY  STORIES     239 

— the  way  it  bristles  with  all  sorts  of  ugliness  and 
technicalities.  Perhaps  that  is  why  I  go  all  the 
way  even  with  "The  Gadsbys" — the  Gadsbys  were 
so  connected  (uncomfortably,  it  is  true)  with  the 
army.  There  is  fearful  fighting — or  a  fearful 
danger  of  it— in  "The  Man  Who  Would  be  King" ; 
is  that  the  reason  we  are  deeply  affected  by  this 
extraordinary  tale?  It  is  one  of  them,  doubtless, 
for  Mr.  Kipling  has  many  reasons,  after  all,  on  his 
side,  though  they  don't  equally  call  aloud  to  be 
uttered. 

One  more  of  them,  at  any  rate,  I  must  add  to 
these  unsystematised  remarks — it  is  the  one  I  spoke 
of  a  shrewd  guess  at  in  alluding  to  "The  Courting 
of  Dinah  Shadd."  The  talent  that  produces  such 
a  tale  is  a  talent  eminently  in  harmony  with  the 
short  story,  and  the  short  story  is,  on  our  side  of 
the  Channel  and  of  the  Atlantic,  a  mine  which  will 
take  a  great  deal  of  working.  Admirable  is  the 
clearness  with  which  Mr.  Kipling  perceives  this — 
perceives  what  innumerable  chances  it  gives, 
chances  of  touching  life  in  a  thousand  different 
places,  taking  it  up  in  innumerable  pieces,  each  a 
specimen  and  an  illustration.  In  a  word,  he  ap 
preciates  the  episode,  and  there  are  signs  to  show 
that  this  shrewdness  will,  in  general,  have  long  in 
nings.  It  will  find  the  detachable,  compressible 
"case"  an  admirable,  flexible  form;  the  cultivation 
of  which  may  well  add  to  the  mistrust  already  en- 


240  VIEWS  AND  REVIEWS 

tertained  by  Mr.  Kipling,  if  his  manner  does  not 
betray  him,  for  what  is  clumsy  and  tasteless  in  the 
time-honoured  practice  of  the  "plot."  It  will  for 
tify  him  in  the  conviction  that  the  vivid  picture 
has  a  greater  communicative  value  than  the  Chi 
nese  puzzle.  There  is  little  enough  "plot"  in  such 
a  perfect  little  piece  of  hard  representation  as 
"The  End  of  the  Passage,"  to  cite  again  only  the 
most  salient  of  twenty  examples. 

But  I  am  speaking  of  our  author's  future,  which 
is  the  luxury  that  I  meant  to  forbid  myself — pre 
cisely  because  the  subject  is  so  tempting.  There  is 
nothing  in  the  world  (for  the  prophet)  so  charm 
ing  as  to  prophesy,  and  as  there  is  nothing  so  incon 
clusive  the  tendency  should  be  repressed  in  pro 
portion  as  the  opportunity  is  good.  There  is  a 
certain  want  of  courtesy  to  a  peculiarly  contem 
poraneous  present  even  in  speculating,  with  a  dozen 
differential  precautions,  on  the  question  of  what 
will  become  in  the  later  hours  of  the  day  of  a 
talent  that  has  got  up  so  early.  Mr.  Kipling's 
actual  performance  is  like  a  tremendous  walk  be 
fore  breakfast,  making  one  welcome  the  idea  of  the 
meal,  but  consider  with  some  alarm  the  hours  still 
to  be  traversed.  Yet  if  his  breakfast  is  all  to  come, 
the  indications  are  that  he  will  be  more  active 
than  ever  after  he  has  had  it.  Among  these  indi 
cations  are  the  unflagging  character  of  his  pace 
and  the  excellent  form,  as  they  say  in  athletic 


MR.  KIPLING'S  EARLY  STORIES     241 

circles,  in  which  he  gets  over  the  ground.  We 
don't  detect  him  stumbling;  on  the  contrary,  he 
steps  out  quite  as  briskly  as  at  first,  and  still  more 
firmly.  There  is  something  zealous  and  crafts 
man-like  in  him  which  shows  that  he  feels  both 
joy  and  responsibility.  A  whimsical,  wanton 
reader,  haunted  by  a  recollection  of  all  the  good 
things  he  has  seen  spoiled;  by  a  sense  of  the  mis 
erable,  or,  at  any  rate,  the  inferior,  in  so  many 
continuations  and  endings,  is  almost  capable  of 
perverting  poetic  justice  to  the  idea  that  it  would 
be  even  positively  well  for  so  surprising  a  pro 
ducer  to  remain  simply  the  fortunate,  suggestive, 
unconfirmed  and  unqualified  representative  of  what 
he  has  actually  done.  We  can  always  refer  to  that. 


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